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THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

HEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OP CANADA, Lro, 

TORONTO 



THE RECONSTRUCTION 
OF RELIGION 

A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW 


BY 

CHARLES A. ELLWOOD, Ph.D. 

* 

Professor of Sociology in the University of Missouri. 
Author of “The Social Problem,” “An Introduction 
to Social Psychology,” etc. 


J?eto I^orfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1923 


All rights reserved 


MOUNT-PLEASANT BRANCH 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 




Copyright, 1922, 

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1922. 


FERRIS 

PRINTING COMPANY 
NEW YORK CITY 


TRANSFER 

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To my son, 

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE ELLW00D, 

and to all of his generation, 
who have before them the heavy 
task of building a world of 
justice, good will, and peace. 





*i 4 ■ 

*> '* 1 • 


.Vi 









PREFACE 


In previous works the author has repeatedly said: 
“One of the greatest social needs of the present is a re¬ 
ligion adapted to the requirements of modern life and in 
harmony with modern science.” 1 Since the beginning 
of the Great War a number of the most dispassionate and 
detached thinkers of our time have expressed the same 
general idea. Two eminent British sociologists have re¬ 
cently expressed themselves thus: “We are compelled to 
the admission (one hard for the student, the man of pure 
or applied science), that the essential problem of life is 
not material, but psychical. In a word, life needs to he 
eupsychic; or in an older word, religious.” 2 In May, 
1916, Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson said in a private conver¬ 
sation with the author, “If I should guess, I would say 
that the great need of the world, just at present, is more 
religion. Of course, I mean religion of the right sort; 
of religion of a certain sort there is a plenty, hut not 
enough of the right sort.” 3 Again, in March, 1915, the 
author had the pleasure of visiting with Mr. Frederic 
Harrison, the veteran leader of the English Positivists. 
Mr. Harrison forcefully expressed the opinion that the 
Great War was due to the decadence of ethical religion, 
and that the problem of world peace and order would 
never he settled until the religious question was settled. 

1 See Introduction to Social Psychology, p. 273; The Social Prob¬ 
lem, Revised Edition, p. 217. 

J Branford and Geddes, The Coming Polity, p. 242. 

* See also the statements in his work, Religion: a Criticism and a 
Forecast. 

vii 


PREFACE 

lie has since expressed substantially the same view in 
recent books. 1 

Unlike the last two social thinkers just cited, the pres¬ 
ent writer would find the religion needed by the modern 
world in a more rational, revitalized, socialized Chris¬ 
tianity. He agrees much more nearly with another emi¬ 
nent leader of Anglo-American ethical and religious think¬ 
ing, who, though like the two preceding in his detach¬ 
ment from conventional religious circles, yet has found 
it possible to say: “Christianity, as soon as it has become 
transfused with the spirit and transformed by the method 
of modern science, will bring about the Millennium.” 2 
The thesis of this book, however, is rather that it is only a 
Christianity of this sort which is equal to the task of 
saving modern civilization, and of harmonizing its war¬ 
ring interests, classes, nations, and races. To this extent 
the author is in accord with those thinkers who see in a 
religious awakening the only hope of bringing our world 
back to social sanity and good will. 3 But he would add 
that the religious spirit can be revivified only when re¬ 
ligion is brought into harmony with men’s unquestioned 
scientific beliefs and with their social needs—that is, into 
harmony with science and democracy. Intelligence rather 
than emotion or tradition should guide, accordingly, in 
the religious life. 

The modern world is completely torn asunder by con¬ 
flicting ideals of life. It will continue to remain in this 
condition until there is some unity in social doctrine. 
But there is hope in all this confusion that the mass of 
men are coming to see that it is impossible for either 

1 See especially The German Peril , pp. 266-269. 

2 Dr. Stanton Coit, The Soul of America , p. 247. 

* See especially Kidd, The Science of Power; also Patrick, The 

Psychology of Social Reconstruction , p. 286. 

• • • 

Vlll 


PREFACE 


individuals or nations to live together harmoniously upon 
the basis of the pagan and barbarous ideals of life which 
have been handed down in the traditions of our civilization 
and which some men, without adequate sociological knowl¬ 
edge, have endorsed. There is hope, in other words, that 
through calamity, if in no other way, men are slowly 
coming to a sense of the value of likemindedness and of 
good will among all men. Science, through its progres¬ 
sive demonstration of the truth in all fields of human 
interest, is slowly showing men how to achieve likemind¬ 
edness as regards the essential problems of human living. 
But the program of applied social science cannot be car¬ 
ried out without good will among men; and herein lies 
the supreme importance of social religion. Religion con¬ 
cerns itself with social values. By intensifying and uni¬ 
versalizing them it gives rise to the life-mood of human 
beings and thus furnishes a control which is competent to 
achieve universal good will. This, in the opinion of the 
writer, is the solution of the problem of securing adequate 
motivation for a better social order, which is so much de¬ 
bated at the present time; and if correct, it obviously 
places a heavy responsibility upon the Church. 

The religious revolution of the last two generations, 
which undermined theological Christianity, however, has 
left the Church all but prostrate and powerless before the 
immense social task which now confronts it. It is the 
object of this book to help show how the breath of life 
may again be breathed into its nostrils, and how the 
Church can again become that “spiritual power” which the 
world needs to energize and harmonize its life. To be 
sure, a host of goodly books are attempting, at this mo¬ 
ment, to do the very same thing. The author would 

claim only the merit of a specific point of view—that of 

ix 


PREFACE 


social science 1 —in adding his work to the many that al¬ 
ready exist. It must be, however, the social sciences to 
which the world must look more and more for guidance 
and hence to which religion also must look. The signifi¬ 
cance of the social sciences for religion, he believes, is not 
yet appreciated, and his task is to attempt to disclose, in 
part, that significance. He does not attempt, accordingly, 
to discuss specifically the metaphysical and theological 
questions which are usually raised whenever religion is 
mentioned. He attempts to discuss the reconstruction of 
religion only from a sociological, not from a philosophical 
or theological viewpoint. It is true that in a few places 
in the book rather definite theological views have been 
expressed. If these are found by any one to be bad 
theology, it will not affect the argument of the book. For 
it cannot be too strongly asserted that neither the vitality 
nor the social power of religion is bound up with the fate 
of any specific theological doctrine. This truth, to which 
both history and anthropology abundantly testify, needs 
emphasis especially in a period of religious reconstruction 
like the present. Religion must be freed from the tram¬ 
mels of theological dogmatism if it is to be free to de¬ 
velop in such a way as to meet the requirements of mod¬ 
ern life. 

In brief, religion as a practical program for dealing 
with the world’s ills must be based upon social science— 
it must be ever guided by growing social knowledge. On 
the other hand, social science must find its completion in 
social religion. These two should become but different 
aspects of one fundamental attitude in all normal, edu- 

1 The term, “social science,” as used in this book, refers not only 
to sociology, but to all the social sciences taken collectively, includ¬ 
ing anthropology, social psychology, social ethics and social phi¬ 
losophy, so far as these latter are based upon science. 



PREFACE 


cated minds. The writer is not unaware of the dangers 
and difficulties of such a position. In the present con¬ 
dition of both the scientific and the religious world it may 
seem mere rashness to affirm that completed science leads 
to religion and that the conclusions of social science, more¬ 
over, are practically at one with those of the new social 
Christianity. Such a position can scarcely be expected to 
please the conservatives in either science or religion. The 
writer is willing to accept the full consequences of this 
position, and, in the words of a great humanitarian states¬ 
man, “to play for the verdict of mankind.” He would 
go further and say that beyond the merely descriptive 
tasks of science are its tasks of evaluation, and that upon 
the social sciences especially rests the responsibility of 
guiding ethical and religious evaluations. It is the duty 
of the sociologist to aid in the solution of the religious 
problem. In a fully scientific world not only would a 
scientific man who had knowledge of the conditions of 
human living be expected to “preach” (as, indeed, we 
now expect our health experts to do), but “preaching” 
without scientific knowledge of human conditions would 
not be tolerated. 

Some misunderstanding may perhaps be avoided if we 
say that science—that is, accurate, rationalized knowledge 
—cannot, of course, be everything in religion. Science, 
at most, can furnish but one of the bases of religion. 
Science is not religion, nor can it become a substitute for 
religion. Religion is and must remain essentially in the 
realm of faith; it necessarily transcends science, but it 
can and should become a rational faith, energizing men 
for better living both individually and socially, and seek¬ 
ing the aid of science, especially the social sciences, for 
the building of a better human world. That, again, in 
brief, is the practical plea of this book. 



PREFACE 


The book is necessarily a book of value-judgments, of 
conclusions rather than mere facts. The facts upon which 
the conclusions are based will be found scattered through¬ 
out the literature of the social sciences, especially of 
anthropology and sociology. A few of the sources have 
been indicated in the citations in the foot-notes, and they 
are more fully indicated in the author’s other published 
works, of which this volume may be considered an elabo¬ 
ration on the ethical and religious side. It is hoped also 
that the foot-notes may be found useful by those who wish 
guidance for further reading. The central argument of 
the book will be found stated in Chapters II, III, V, 
and XI. The other chapters elaborate or apply the view¬ 
points developed in these central chapters. 

As the book attempts a constructive application of the 
principles of sociology and social psychology to the re¬ 
ligious problem of our time, the theoretical principles 
made use of are naturally those stated in the author’s 
Introduction to Social Psychology, and also, in a more 
brief and popular form, in his book, The Social Problem: 
A Reconstructive Analysis. The general philosophical 
background may best be found, by those who may be in¬ 
terested, in ITobhouse’s Development and Purpose and his 
Morals in Evolution. 

Xo citations are made from the Bible, not because the 
author has not a deep appreciation of the value of that 
book for the religious life, but because he would not pro¬ 
fess to have any adequate equipment for technical Xew 
Testament interpretation, and even more because he wishes 
his work regarded solely as a work in applied social 
science. Such citations, it is believed, would add little, if 
anything, to the value of the book. The reality with which 
the sociologist is concerned is the objective Christian move¬ 
ment; and the animating principle of that movement is 

• « 

Xll 


PEEFACE 


the Christian tradition, the fountain head of which is the 
Bible, especially the Gospels. The great value of the 
Bible is, therefore, in defining and fixing the Christian 
tradition 1 ; and if the discussions in the following pages 
shall move any to examine carefully and open-mindedly 
the teachings of the Gospels in connection with the great 
problems of our time, then the author will be more than 
repaid for his labors. 


So many friends have helped in the preparation of this 
book by their suggestions and criticisms that it is impos¬ 
sible for me to acknowledge my indebtedness to all of 
them. I feel, however, particularly indebted to Professor 
George A. Coe of Union Theological Seminary, whose sug¬ 
gestions and criticisms have been invaluable to me. Also 
I am indebted to Professor Herbert N. Shenton of Co¬ 
lumbia University who has read large portions of the 
manuscript. These kind friends should not, however, be 
held responsible for anything in the book, as that respon¬ 
sibility is solely my own. I am also indebted to a num¬ 
ber of my colleagues at the University of Missouri, espe¬ 
cially to Professor A. F. Kuhlman of my department, who 
has helped me in correcting both the manuscript and the 
proofs. 

Charles A. Ellwood. 

University of Missouri, 

November 24, 1921. 

1 For a full statement of the author’s attitude toward the Bible, 
see pp. 145, 152 and 153. 


xiii 


NOTE TO THE REVISED EDITION 


No changes have been made in this edition except some 
minor corrections on pages 83, 154, and 305. Two appen¬ 
dices have however been added—one an analytical table of 
contents and the other a list of books in English suggested 
for collateral reading. It is hoped that these may prove 
useful to students and teachers who may wish to use the 
book as a text, whether in college, in Sunday School, or in 
reading circle classes. 


Charles A. Ellwood. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 
V. 

YI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 


PAQ1 

The Religious Revolution . . . 1 

The Social Significance of Religion . 33 

The Social Significance of Chris¬ 
tianity .70 

Our Semi-Pagan Civilization . . .93 


Positive Christianity the Religion of 
Humanity. 

The Essentials of a Social Religion . 
Religion and Family Life 
Religion and Economic Life . 

Religion and Political Life . 

Religion and Social Pleasure 
The Opportunity of the Church 
Appendix. 


119 

161 

188 

210 

243 

264 

280 

307 






THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


“We have a rich harvest of science, a profusion of ma¬ 
terial facilities, a vast collection of the ideas and products 
of past ages. ... We need now only harmony, order, 
union; we need only to group into a whole these powers 
and gifts; the task before us is to discover some complete 
and balanced system of life; some common basis of belief; 
some object for the imperishable religious instincts and 
aspirations of mankind; some faith to bind the existence 
of man to the visible universe around him; some common 
social bond for thought, action and feeling.”—Frederic 
Harrison, The Meaning of History, p. 75. 

“I believe that before all things needful, beyond all else 
is true religion. This only can give wisdom, happiness, 
and goodness to men, and a nobler life to mankind. Noth¬ 
ing but this can sustain, guide, and satisfy all lives, con¬ 
trol all characters, and unite all men.”—Frederic Har¬ 
rison, The Creed of a Layman, p. 37. 




THE RECONSTRUCTION OF 

RELIGION 

A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW 

CHAPTER I 

THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 


A crisis confronts religion in the modern world. A 
New Reformation is necessary within the Christian 
Church, if it is to survive, besides which the Protestant 
Reformation will seem insignificant . 1 Like all our other 
institutions, religion is in revolution. Either some new 
form of Christianity 2 or sheer atheism will soon become 
dominant in the more advanced nations, with agnostic 
scientific positivism as a third possibility. A fourth pos¬ 
sibility, of course, is that our whole civilization may re¬ 
vert to a lower level, and that older and cruder forms of 
religion may again appear and become common. But this 
could scarcely occur until the foundations of the higher 
forms of religion had become sapped; while for psycho- 

1 See Fitch, Can the Church Survive in the Changing Order ?, es¬ 
pecially pp. 69-79. 

2 We shall use this term, unless qualified, to mean the religion 
of Jesus—surely its proper sense. When educated people discuss 
the merits of Buddhism, they usually mean the religion of Gautama 
Buddha, not the hodge-podge which goes by that name in various 
lands. So in a scientific discussion of religion, it is only fair to 
let Christianity be the name for the religion of Jesus rather than 
the clutter of historical beliefs which have at one time or another 
assumed that name. 


1 


2 


THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


logical reasons (which we shall later discuss) any wide¬ 
spread dissemination and popular acceptance of an ag¬ 
nostic positivism is improbable. Practically, therefore, 
the alternatives before the modern world in a religious 
way would seem to be either radical irreligion or some 
more socialized and rationalized form of the religion of 
Jesus than has yet been attained. The final outcome of 
the religious revolution through which we are passing 1 
is not yet discernible; but its possibilities are, and it is 
time for thoughtful men to choose among these possibili¬ 
ties while they are still free to shape the future of religion. 

The crisis in the religious world has been brought about 
by the failure of existing religion to adapt itself to the 
two outstanding facts in our civilization—science and 
democracy. The church must learn to adapt itself to 
these two mighty forces which are building our civiliza¬ 
tion. Of these two, science is the more outstanding and 
dominant. It is the foundation of our views of life and 
of the universe, as well as of our material progress, and 
so it has largely created the conditions which have favored 
the rise of modern democracy. Yet the maladjustment of 
religion with science remains pronounced. Often are we 
assured by some one in the name of science that science 
can find nothing in religion except superstition, error, or 
“the will-to-power” of some privileged class; while, on 
the other hand, the representatives of religion not infre- 

1 Says Professor E. G. Conklin (The Direction of Human Evolution, 
p. 244) : To-day we are in the midst of a religious revolution, which 
is going on so quietly that many do not notice it, although it is a 
greater and more fundamental revolution than any since the early 
years of the Christian era.” And, he asks: “Can Christianity become 
the religion of reason and science as well as of emotion and faith, and 
be made the power for individual and social progress which its founder 
intended? The reader will note that the phrase “religious revolu¬ 
tion is used in this book like the phrase “industrial revolution,” not 
to indicate a violent change, but a great transformation. The 
Protestant Reformation was a religious revolution in this sense. 


3 


THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 

quently proclaim it outside of the field of science and re¬ 
sent its scientific evaluation as a species of “sacrilege.” 
Both attitudes have made difficult the attainment of ra¬ 
tional religion; that is, a religion in accord with the estab¬ 
lished facts of human experience . 1 

But if religion is a vital element in civilization (as we 
hope to show), then the attainment of a rational, ethical 
religion is one of the greatest and most fundamental of 
our social needs, and nothing could he more short-sighted 
and stupid than an irrational attitude toward religion, 
whether on the part of its defenders or of its critics. In 
the reconstruction of our civilization which we now face, 
it is time that scientific thinkers and the representatives 
of religion join hands in seeking to promote the develop¬ 
ment of rational religion as the world’s supreme need. 

For we shall not be able to reconstruct our civilization 
without the reconstruction of religion; and the first thing 
to be aimed at in the reconstruction of religion is to make 
it rational . 2 Science, as we have noted, is the outstand¬ 
ing and dominating fact in modern civilization. A re¬ 
ligion which is “adapted to the requirements of modern 
life” must first of all be adjusted to modern science. A 
religion which is not in harmony with modern science can¬ 
not possibly remain the religion of the thinking class of 
the future. The hope for religion, as for our social life 
generally, must lie in following reason, not in thwarting it. 

1 Almost equally regrettable, because harmful to the true interests 
of religion, is the attitude of those religious people who resent all 
criticism of religious beliefs and institutions by scientific men, even 
when made with constructive intent. Constructive criticism should 
always be welcome, for it is the normal method by which institutions 
grow. See my Introduction to Social Psychology, p. 149f. 

3 For a critical discussion of all that is implied in this word and 
for the presuppositions of the argument of this book, the reader can¬ 
not do better than to consult Professor Hobhouse’s recent work, The 
Rational Good, especially Chapters I and III. 


4 


THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


This may be evident, but there are difficulties in the 
way. Strangely enough, the defenders as well as the 
critics of religion have often held that to make it rational 
would be to destroy it. Ever since Immanuel Kant wrote 
his treatise on Religion Within the Limits of Mere 
Reason, there has been continual controversy between those 
whom we may call the rationalists in religion and those 
who have stood for some form of irrationalism, whether 
traditionalism, mysticism, or some other . 1 Without deny¬ 
ing that there are necessary elements of tradition and mys¬ 
tery in all religion (even science has these), it would seem 
that this conflict is no longer unresolvable. Scarcely any 
one would be willing to acknowledge that his particular re¬ 
ligious faith is unreasonable. Every one acknowledges, in 
one way or another, the supremacy of the human reason as 
the ultimate means of testing beliefs and actions . 2 The 
whole world has become rationalistic in the sense that it 
acknowledges that the validity of everything must ulti¬ 
mately be tested through rational processes; 3 and religion 

1 The solution of the problem of the relations of religion and 
science proposed in this book is, in a sense, the opposite of that 
proposed by Kant. Kant claimed that the problems of religion could 
not be approached through science or ordinary rational knowledge, 
but that religious beliefs were necessary, rational, postulates of the 
moral life. Thus he created a dualism in intelligence. 

2 Even those persons, one may add, who use reason to refute reason 
or to show its limitations. For a statement of various anti-intellectual 
attitudes toward religion, see Hocking, The Meaning of Ood in Human 
Experience, Chap. 4. It may be well to state at the outset that no 
intellectualistic theory of religion is proposed in this book. All that 
is proposed is to bring religion within the purview of science. 

* This statement is true only when we critically judge the implica¬ 
tions of modern irrationalism. For a brief exposition of irrationalism 
in modern science itself, see Hobhouse, The Rational Good, Chap. I. 
Much of the prevalent irrationalism is due to misunderstanding the 
term “reason.” “Much of the prejudice against reason,” says Pro¬ 
fessor Hobhouse, “is due to a misconception for which its friends are 
as much responsible as its enemies. By both alike reason is often 
taken as a thing apart. On the side of knowledge it is divorced from 
experience, on the side of conduct frqm feeling. In both cases the 




THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 


5 


can scarcely hope that the processes which men make use 
of in judging other affairs of life will not be applied to 
it also. A religion which will meet the needs of modern 
life must accordingly be not merely remotely in some pos¬ 
sible harmony with science, but it must be directly indi¬ 
cated by science as a necessity for the development of “a 
humanity adjusted to the requirements of its existence.” 

It may seem sheer audacity to declare that rational re¬ 
ligion is not merely reconcilable with science, but that 
developed and completed science is a foundation for ra¬ 
tional religion. Here, of course, it is necessary to guard 
oneself against being misunderstood. Fragmentary 
science, a science which sees the universe merely in bits, 
and which fails to recognize the social and spiritual life 
of man as subject-matter for its understanding, will see 
nothing in religion. Of such science there is an abun¬ 
dance in the world at the present time; but it would be 
as unfair to judge science by it as it would be to judge 
democracy by the pitiful examples of it also to be found 
all too frequently in the modern world. A science which 
envisages the total of reality, which aims at accurate 
knowledge of everything which exists, including the total 
life of man, will surely neither leave religion out of ac¬ 
count nor be found antagonistic to rational religion. When 
we assert that science logically leads to, and will become 
a support of, religion, we only mean, therefore, that ac¬ 
curate knowledge of the universe and of the total life of 
man will do this. The more we know of the universe 
and of man, the more we shall know of God. 

divorce is fatal to a true understanding” (p. 19). “The conception 
of reason,” he says later, “is not one of a faculty prior to and apart 
from experience ... It is the conception rather of a principle 
operative within experience the work of which is always partial and 
incomplete, . . . the process by which understanding deepens, error 
is repeatedly eliminated, and truth constantly enlarged.” (pp. 73-75) 


6 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

But some one may say that science is only a method; 
that it is not coextensive with the term “accurate knowl¬ 
edge” ; and furthermore, that the accurate knowledge 
which we have or can get concerns such a small part of 
the universe or of human life that it cannot possibly have 
anything to do with religion ; 1 and that we must be con¬ 
tent, therefore, to keep our science in one compartment of 
our mind and our religion in another. Science and re¬ 
ligion have nothing to do with each other and should 
leave each other alone. The reply is that science is not 
merely a method; that it aims at accurate knowledge of 
everything which exists, including religion itself; and 
that while its work is far from complete, its trend, its 
general direction, is such that we are able to see, in part 
at least, which way we must go if we follow its lead. 
Science, indeed, is itself nothing but the rationalizing 
activity of the human mind brought to bear upon the 
tangible problems of life. It may, and does, regard its 
work as incomplete, wherever the evidence needed for a 
judgment upon those problems is incomplete. Thus it 
hands over to philosophy the work of formulating rational 
inferences regarding ultimate problems. But modern 
philosophy aims more and more to become scientific; and 
religion, if it is to survive in a scientific and rationaliz¬ 
ing world, must move along the same path. As a recent 
writer has well said: “If religion is nothing but the sub- 

1 The arbitrary limitations put upon science both by its friends and 
by its critics at times, are as absurd as those put upon religion. Thus 
it is said that science is merely the method of measurement, or the 
tracing of casual mechanistic sequences; that it cannot take teleology 
into account, even though human purposes are a part of human 
experience, etc. The contrary assumption of this book is that the 
development of science can be limited only by human experience; that 
science is “a movement towards the knowledge of reality”; and that 
consequently everything within human experience may be brought to 
its tests. See Hobhouse, Development and Purpose, especially Part II, 
Chap. II. 


THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 


7 


mission to mystery, it is doomed. If it is the trembling 
register of fear, transmuted maybe into softened keys but 
always fear,—if this is all there is in life that is religious, 
it is not enough to satisfy the rational intelligence. Yet 
that is what a theology based upon the irrational back¬ 
ground of life demands. In short, there must be religion 
of the head as well as of the heart, if the head is getting 
control of the situation—or else religion will share the 
fate of the emotions in which it has been enthroned. It 
will be disbarred from directing the life of intelligence, 
both individual and social.” 1 

Another misunderstanding must here be guarded 
against; and that is that a rational religion will be a 
weakened, emasculated religion taking no account of 
man’s impulses and emotions, but as arid and lifeless as 
the so-called “rationalism” of the eighteenth century. In¬ 
deed, a small group of people still exist who call them¬ 
selves “rationalists” who display as their chief justifica¬ 
tion for this self-bestowed appellation a negative attitude 
towards all religion. 2 Whether or not such persons are 
entitled to call themselves “rationalists” in any sense, it 
is evident that a religion adapted to the needs of human 
life cannot be a weak, colorless, largely negative intel¬ 
lectual belief, but it must enlist the whole nature of man. 
It must appeal to his impulses and emotions as well as 
to his most highly developed reason. A rational religion 
is one which can meet all of these tests. That, indeed, is 
the very mark and criterion of its rationality, that it is 
in harmony with the whole life of man; only in that life 
of man it finds the developed reason to be the final organ 

1 Shotwell, The Religious Revolution of Today, p. 154. 

J One writer (Benn, The History of Rationalism) has even gone so 
far as to define rationalism as “the mental habit of using reason for 
the destruction of religious beliefs.” 


8 


THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


of adaptation, the highest and hence the ultimate guide. 1 
It would be an irrational science which would fail to take 
account of the whole nature of man, and which considered 
him merely as an abstract intellectual creature motivated 
and controlled by “pure reason”; so, too, it would be an 
equally irrational religion which would regard man as a 
creature of pure reason, or attempt so to appeal to him. 

Even Kant did not mean that man is a thing of pure 
reason. 2 What he meant rather was that religion so far 
as it was true and useful, like everything else true and 
useful, could be stated in rational terms; that is, that it 
could be rationalized, even though from its very nature 
it comprehended, in one sense, the whole life of man. 
Rational religion will still have its appeal to the emo¬ 
tions and to the impulses, as much as rational patriotism, 
or rational morality. It is the function of the reason, 
as the universal relating activity of mind, to harmonize 
everything in life, assigning to each factor its proper 
value in the whole process. 3 It is because of this, in¬ 
deed, that we trust the rationalizing mechanism in the 
human mind to be the final adaptive organ in the process 

1 Says Professor Fitch (op. cit. p. 30): “Rationalism means 
dependence upon one of man’s faculties alone, the reasoning one”; 
and he rightly adds, “It is as partial and dangerous as dependence 
upon feeling alone.” This, however, was eighteenth century ration¬ 
alism; but neo-rationalism would make “experience as a whole the 
guide,” only insisting that this should mean in final development, 
organized and verified experience—in other words, approaching and 
settling every question in a scientific attitude of mind. “To the true 
rationalism,” says Professor Hobhouse (Mind in Evolution), “the 
supreme reason is no dry pedant living apart and blighting the free 

spontaneous life of impulse, but the animating spirit that interpene¬ 
trates experience and gives to its otherwise scattered fragments new 
and harmonious meaning.” 

3 Kant’s famous definition of religion, “The perception of all of our 
duties as divine commands,” implies, of course, that in both man and 
religion there is something other than the rational element. 

•Compare Hobhouse’s statement {The Rational Good, p. 75), 
“Reason is the principle of interconnection persistently applied.” 


THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 


9 


of human living. We need to recognize fully, the worth 
of other elements in human nature, but we must realize 
that in the complex world in which we live these other 
elements cannot furnish the ultimate test of our values. 
It is reason which must lead us upward and on in our 
struggle to get a human life more completely adapted to 
the complex requirements of its existence. But it is not 
the reason of the individual by itself which we thus trust 
to lead us on to higher and better things. It is rather 
that developing reason in the whole life of society which 
we call “science.” The individual reason, we all see, is 
narrow and limited; but the possibilities of handing down 
and accumulating the tested product of the rational activi¬ 
ties of many individual minds, that is, accurate knowl¬ 
edge, from generation to generation are unlimited; and 
thus reason is hound to perfect itself in the race, 1 if not 
in the individual, provided of course that some great 
calamity does not interrupt its work. The modern faith 
in science is thus itself a faith in the rational and rests 
upon a secure foundation of knowledge. 


1 Compare Spaulding, The New Rationalism,; also Hobhouse, The 
Rational Good, Chapter III, and Hobhouse, Development and Purpose, 
p. 249. There is little or no ground for Kidd ( Social Evolution) 
and other irrationalists limiting the function of reason to individual 
adjustments on the basis of self-interest, and finding all altruistic 
actions to be due to a supra-rational force. On the contrary, there 
are good psychological grounds for saying that when rational pro¬ 
cesses thus function they are imperfect or perverted by unsocial habits 
or impulses (see my Sociology in Its Psychological Aspects, pp. 120 
and 274). The accumulated effects of experience in social traditions 
and institutions, moreover, must be regarded as the work of reason; 
e. g., the development of the scientific tradition in society. Skepticism 
in regard to the work of reason and science, as of everything else, is 
of course possible. The reader will easily find abundant illustrations 
of the distrust of reason and science in modern literature and 
philosophy, but it may be pointed out that such distrust always ends, 
if not in mysticism, then in pessimism or reactionary traditionalism. 
No better refutation of such irrationalism will be found than that in 
Hobhouse’s Development and Purpose, and, more briefly, in his recent 
work, The Rational Good, Chapters I, III and VIII. 


10 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

It may be objected that there is another element in re¬ 
ligion which gives us a surer foundation of certainty than 
any rationalizing process either in the individual or in 
the race can do; and that is the element of “inspiration/’ 
or “intuition,” as modern philosophers prefer to call it. 1 
Even if there is such an element, however, it is bound 
to work with and submit to the reason. This is shown 
by the fact that the reason has often undermined the re¬ 
ligious and moral “intuitions,” or “inspirations,” of other 
ages. Not that these intuitions or inspirations did not 
have a value for the particular time and occasion when 
they were delivered, but like everything else in life they 
were bound to submit to the criticism of the reason, and 
as a consequence many in time have been rejected. Those 
that we still accept we accept only because thus far they 
have been found to be rational when tested by critical 
reasoning. There are axioms and postulates in religion 
and morality, in other words, just as in science; but 
like those of science they must submit to rational tests if 
they are to remain accepted. 2 3 The critical method of 
science does not leave unexamined even its own postulates, 
much less can it leave those of morality and religion. In 
the one case, as in the other, we may rest assured that 
“the intuitions of common sense,” however, will in the 
long run be seldom overthrown when they are well 
grounded in total human experience. The fundamentals 
of religion, like the fundamentals of life itself, are not 

1 The most recent expression of this attitude is found in Bergson’s 
works. A brief presentation of his point of view will be found in his 
Introduction to Metaphysics, translated by T. E. Hulme. While 
intuition is now generally recognized by psychologists as having a 
certain validity, there is no warrant in psychology for placing it above 
critical reasoning and scientific method. Compare Coe, The Psychology 

of Religion, p. 9. 

3 On the place of intuitions and postulates within the rational, see 
Hobhouse, The Rational Good, pp. 64-72. 


THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 


11 


going to be thrown out of the window by science in the 
name of reason, but rather will be tested by reason. If 
anything is finally rejected it will be because, being tested, 
it is found wanting. Thus a rational religion which shall 
be far stronger in its hold upon human belief in the 
social future, because resting upon adequate and secure 
foundations, is clearly possible. 

Nevertheless, the struggle to secure a rational religion 
in the modern world has been accompanied by the most 
profound social disturbances. Men’s beliefs, even in the 
things which were accepted as axiomatic by the past, have 
been undermined. The whole structure of values and 
standards by which civilization has been sustained from 
the stone age to the present has seemed at times about to 
crumble and give way. Our whole modern life has been 
largely during the last two decades a scene of confused 
and conflicting values, ideals, and standards. 1 Now there 
can be no doubt that the main element disturbing the 
habits, standards, and beliefs of the past in the modern 
world has been science. The new knowledge which it has 
brought has often been difficult to assimilate with the old 
beliefs and standards. It has not only infinitely enlarged 
the world in which man lives, extending it even beyond 
the limits of his past imagination, but has even trans¬ 
formed the physical environment in which he lives. This 
transformation of the environment, or man’s conquest and 
control over nature, has made his social life much more 
complex. 2 By furnishing a much larger food supply, it 
has multiplied human populations many fold, and so mul¬ 
tiplied and intensified social contacts between individuals. 
By inventing new means of controlling and harnessing 

1 See The Social Problem, Revised Edition, 1919, Chapter I. 

2 Ibid., pp. 77-85. 


12 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


physical energies, it has made the world in which the 
civilized individual lives a world of machines. The in¬ 
vention of machines, moreover, has produced what is 
known as “great industry,” and great industry demands 
such organization that the individual himself seems to be 
nothing but part of a vaster machine. New methods of 
transportation and of intercommunication made possible 
by these new mechanical inventions have brought about 
at the same time greater interdependence, contact, and 
intermingling of all the peoples of the world. The whole 
planet is now no larger than a good sized island was at 
the beginning of the nineteenth century. Race contacts 
and international contacts have vastly multiplied. Cul¬ 
tures 1 and civilizations so blend and overlap that it is 
beginning to become evident that one relatively uniform 
culture must finally dominate the world. 

In the religious world these changes in science, in in¬ 
dustry, and in the general social environment have pro¬ 
duced what has been aptly termed “the religious revolu¬ 
tion.” Not only have old theological beliefs crumbled, 
but the theological way of looking at life and at things 
generally is seen to be of much less importance than for¬ 
mer generations supposed. The entire edifice of specu¬ 
lative theology has, indeed, been undermined, and by 
many scientific thinkers it is assigned to the same rank 
as the mythologies of primitive and barbarous peoples. 
Because of the identification, moreover, in the popular 
mind of religion with theological beliefs, religion itself 
as a “control” over life has greatly suffered. Not only 
have religious beliefs and values changed, but they have 
been immensely weakened. Says an eminent English 

1 The word “culture” is used in this book, as in sociology and 
anthropology generally, meaning civilization in the widest sense. In 
this sense all human societies, even savages, possess some degree of 
culture. For the stages of culture, see Chapter III. 


THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 


13 


social and philosophical thinker: 1 “The influence of the 
Christian religion on daily life has decayed very rapidly 
throughout Europe during the last hundred years. Not 
only has the proportion of nominal believers declined, but 
even among those who believe the intensity of belief is 
enormously diminished.” 

The truth of this statement, even though it is made by 
one avowedly hostile to Christianity, can scarcely be 
doubted by any one who knows fully the facts. 2 It would 
not be disturbing, however, if in the place of the tradi¬ 
tional Christianity which has existed in Europe during 
the last hundred years some socially higher form of re¬ 
ligion was manifestly emerging and becoming dominant; 
but instead we find manifest everywhere, as we shall see, 
a recrudescence of the ideas, values and standards of the 
religions which preceded Christianity in Europe, even in 
their cruder and more brutal forms. 3 

1 Bertrand Russell, Principles of Social Reconstruction, p. 168. 

a In his well known investigation on The Belief in God and Immor¬ 
tality, Professor J. H. Leuba concludes from a study of the opinions 
of nearly one thousand students in the leading American colleges 
that “Christianity, as a system of belief, has utterly broken down, 
and nothing definite, adequate and convincing has taken its place. 
Their beliefs, when they have any, are superficial and amateurish in 
the extreme.” This confusion and uncertainty in religious beliefs 
is, of course, to be expected in an age of revolutionary religious 
changes. Many critics of Christianity would interpret such phe¬ 
nomena as signs of its passing. Thus Edward Carpenter in Pagan 
and Christian Creeds (p. 257) says: “That Christianity can continue 
to hold the field of religion is neither probable nor desirable . . . 
The hour of its Exodus has come.” Such critics usually mean by 
“Christianity” some form or forms of religion taught by the Christian 
Church rather than “the religion of Jesus,” and usually have little 
or no idea of the social evolutionary significance of the latter as set 
forth in Chapter III. 

• See Chapter IV. The recrudescence of pagan ethical and religious 
attitudes, discussed more fully as survivals in our civilization in 
Chapter IV, is pointed to here merely as evidence of the revolutionary 
changes which our ethics and religion are now undergoing—confusion 
and reversion to earlier forms always being characteristic of revo¬ 
lutionary periods. 


> £ • 

■ 4 ; w| 

14 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

The confusion, doubt, and uncertainty which pervade 
our world of religious beliefs and values is not, then, an 
isolated phenomenon. It is only one manifestation of 
the general confusion which exists in the whole modern 
world as regards the values and standards of human liv¬ 
ing. In the new and complex social world in which we 
live the values and standards of simpler ages are often 
found totally unadapted to present conditions, and be¬ 
cause so many have been found wanting, doubt and un¬ 
certainty have spread to all. Even the most fundamental 
beliefs, values, and standards by which men hitherto have 
lived have come to be questioned. 1 All the institutions 
of the modern world may be said to be at the present time 
in the melting pot, being tested in the crucible of fiery 
criticism. 

Such confusion as we are now living in is to be ex¬ 
pected in all ages of transition; for in the transition from 
one way of thinking to another, from one form of insti¬ 
tution to another, there is always a period of confusion 
and uncertainty. 2 Ho individual, to say nothing of a 
whole civilization, ever radically changes his habits with¬ 
out such a period. The danger in all such cases, how¬ 
ever, is that confusion and uncertainty may last too long, 

1 Says Professor Hudson (The Truths We Live By, p. 21) : “Tho 
standards of the home, even the criteria for the rearing of children, 
have broken down. The leisure occupations of youth, always symp¬ 
tomatic of any age, are not only unguidedly and frankly hedonistic, 
but across the borders of what was once considered decorous; not 
because of a new and liberalizing moral standard, as is sometimes 
pretended; but because of the lack of any. The popularity of certain 
recent dances, formerly forbidden even in the “red-light” districts, 
is typical. So is much of our periodical reading matter and any 
number of ‘movie’ plays, over the edge of the decadently erotic.” 
However, after a careful discussion of the present conflict and con¬ 
fusion of ideals, Professor Hudson rightly concludes: “The contra¬ 
dictions of our own day may mean . . . the advance toward a new 
moral order.” See my book, The Social Problem, pp. 29-43 and 73-86. 

* See Introduction to Social Psychology, pp. 163-164. 



THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 


15 


and that instead of new and higher adjustments being 
made under the guidance of reason, human nature may 
fall back upon primitive and irrational adjustments. For 
adjustment upon the plane of animal impulse or rever¬ 
sion to old habits is always easier than adjustment upon 
a new and higher rational plane. To think out the prob¬ 
lems of life requires effort, and when ennui overtakes the 
popular mind in such periods of confusion, it is easier 
to fall back upon mere impulse or mere tradition. Thus 
serious reversions may occur in the development of our 
general social life; 1 and such reversions are an ever 
present danger in our religious and moral life as well as 
in other phases of our social life. 

There is, however, no cause for despair in all this con¬ 
fusion, doubt and uncertainty regarding religious and 
other social values, provided we can get light upon the 
reconstruction in religion and in our social life generally 
which is needed to meet the requirements of modern life. 
A period of revolution and change gives opportunity for 
advance not less than retrogression. Whether we shall 
have advance or retrogression depends upon the ra¬ 
tional guidance which can be given to social movements 
at such a time. It is foolish to expect that in such a crisis 
religion and morality can escape the criticism which is 
being applied to all other institutions. Their friends can 
best serve their interests not by seeking to shield them 
from criticism but by seeking to guide criticism into ra¬ 
tional channels. Unless, however, the religious revolu¬ 
tion (or readjustment) through which the civilized world 
is now passing has rational, scientific guidance, the 
chances are wholly upon the side of readjustment upon a 
much lower social and mental plane than that of the 


Ubid., pp. 184-187. 


16 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


traditional theological Christianity which our modern 
world is leaving behind. 

There is unfortunately abundant evidence 1 just at 
present in the civilized world of reversion to a lower 
plane of moral and religious values than existed a gen¬ 
eration ago. It is true that there have also been made 
throughout the civilized world during the last few decades 
many efforts to lift both religion and morality to a higher 
social and to a more rational plane. But in the face of 
the world-wide conflicts of the present it would be foolish 
for even the most optimistic to believe that such efforts 
have been generally successful; for the conflicts between 
the classes, nations, and races of the modern world are 
only indicative of the fact that as yet no values, adequate 
for a basis of harmonious human living together, have 
been generally accepted. We must candidly face such 
facts; and while there may be many grounds for encour¬ 
agement, as the writer himself firmly believes, it is use¬ 
less to deny or to gloss over the facts which seem to indi¬ 
cate partial social, moral, and religious retrogression. 2 


1 A part of this evidence will be found in Chapter IV. The com¬ 
plexity of our civilization, of course, makes impossible any generaliza¬ 
tion which will apply to all sections of our population, and the 
statements made are meant to express only general trends. Leaders 
especially often advance while popular standards do not do so or 
revert. 

2 The scientific student of society finds that periods of retrogression 
in certain lines of culture are not unusual in human history; indeed, 
that the very method of progress in the past at least has been by 
successive advances and retrogressions, just as the mind proceeds by 
the “trial and error” method. On the confusion, uncertainty and 
reversions which we are likely to find in periods of social transition, 
see my Introduction to Social Psychology, pp. 162-164. 

Says one of the more penetrating popular religious writers: ‘"Blind 
indeed are those who do not see the fact that a great change has 
come over men’s thought on the subject of religion. . . . We have 
broken with the old historical conception of religion in general and 
of Christianity in particular, and we have not, as yet, taken hold of 
the new conception. We are out of the old house and not yet in the 


THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 


17 


It should be unnecessary to say that the scientific social 
thinker who is accustomed to the idea of progress is not 
disturbed by those specific changes in modern life which 
indicate a progressive rationalization of religion and 
morality. He raises the question of decadence only when 
he finds reversions toward forms which he knows belong 
to a lower rather than to a higher stage of social develop¬ 
ment. If, for example, he found the traditional Chris¬ 
tianity of the past being replaced by a form of religion 
which was evidently more adapted to the scientific knowl¬ 
edge and to the general requirements of the social life of 
the present, he would not be disturbed by such a state¬ 
ment as the following, made by a recent English writer: 
“Certainly during the years immediately preceding the 
outbreak of the war there were signs that sympathy with 
the Neo-Pagan spirit was deepening and becoming more 
widespread. In literature and art, in journalism, in phi¬ 
losophy, and even in the Church there were solitary in¬ 
dividuals and small groups of men and women who 
were beginning to make themselves heard. . . . The most 
potent element . . . was probably the increasing influence 
of Nietzsche.” 


Too much in our social life may easily be ascribed to 
the influence of an individual; but individuals often sym¬ 
bolize social tendencies. If Nietzsche were not profoundly 


new. Our state of mind is an unsettled state, our opinions being in 
the condition of the vines that have been torn from the wall to which 
they clung, without being given anything else to cling to. 

“I am sure that the new wall is in process of building, and that 
in due time the vines now trailing the dust will find upon it proper 
support. In a word, the rational —that is to say true—interpreta¬ 
tion of religion will come by and by, and when it does there will 
be an abundant supply of men ready and willing to proclaim its 
uplifting truths.” 

To this statement the author would heartily subscribe. 


18 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

symptomatic of liis age and of the present day/ if he were 
not a symbol, if he did not set the problem for us, it would 
be idle to mention him at all in our discussion. But 
from Machiavelli to Nietzsche there has been a constant 
succession of writers who have denied and derided the 
social ideals of Christianity. The attacks made upon 
theological Christianity left the social influence of the 
Church but little, if at all, weakened; for original Chris¬ 
tianity, that is to say the teachings of Jesus, had had but 
little theology in it. The Church has often condemned 
men for their theological opinions; but Jesus never did. 
The profoundly significant thing in the religious revolu¬ 
tion, then, has been not the attack upon theology, but the 
attack upon and the gradual undermining of Christian 
ethical ideals; and in this movement Nietzsche not only 
marks the culmination but symbolizes and embodies what 
we must undoubtedly regard as one of the strongest tend¬ 
encies of modern civilization—the movement back toward 
pagan ideals. This is the opinion not only of a host of 
writers friendly to Christianity, but also of many of the 
avowed exponents of Neo-Paganism itself. For the pur¬ 
poses of our discussion, then, Nietzsche is merely a sym¬ 
bol to define our problem. 

If Nietzsche symbolizes so much in the spirit of our 
time, and especially the tendency to reversion to the 
pagan level, it will be well to present a few of his lead¬ 
ing ideas in brief quotations, even though the literature 
of the present is crowded ad nauseam with these. 

“I regard Christianity,” says Nietzsche, “as the most 
fatal and seductive lie that has ever yet existed.” 1 2 “Sexu- 

1 Despite the large literature upon Nietzsche, there is little that 
treats of him as a social phenomenon, a product of our civilization. 
An approach to this is found in Figgis, The Will to Freedom. 

2 The Will to Power , translated by A. M. Ludovici, p. 163. This is 
the best single book to present Nietzsche’s ideas. 


THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 


19 


ality, lust of dominion, the pleasure derived from appear¬ 
ance and deception, great and joyful gratitude to Life 
and its typical conditions . . . these things are essential to 
,all Paganism, and it has a good conscience on its side.” 1 
“Poverty, humility,• chastity, are dangerous and slander¬ 
ous ideals.” 2 “Morality is a menagerie,” concludes 
Nietzsche, “it assumes that iron bars may be more useful 
than freedom, even for the creature that it imprisons.” 3 
In one respect Nietzsche was, of course, not symbolical 
of his age, or at least of no increasing party in it; and 
that was in his hatred of democracy and his exaltation of 
the aristocratic ideal of life. “The maintenance of the 
military state,” he says in a characteristic passage, “is the 
last means of adhering to the great tradition of the past, 
or, where it has been lost, to revive it. By means of it 
the superior or strong type of man is preserved, and all 
institutions and ideas which perpetuate enmity and order 
of rank in states, such as national feeling, protective 
tariffs, etc., may on that account seem justified.” 4 

It will not do to dismiss Nietzsche’s ideas with the re¬ 
mark that he was mentally abnormal, because the enlight¬ 
ened egoism, brute force, class aggrandizement, and gen¬ 
eral glorification of the brute in man which he preached 
have been altogether too prevalent in our civilization to 
admit disposing of Nietzsche’s creed in such a manner. 
Indeed, three centuries ago Machiavelli said very much 
the same things, and he, too, was symptomatic of the 
reversion toward pagan ideals in his day. If his teach¬ 
ings do not appear to have had the influence which 
Nietzsche’s teachings appear to have at present, it is only 

1 Quoted by Figgis, op. cit., p. 277. 

s The Will to Power, p. 183. 

* Ibid., p. 348. 

4 Quoted by Figgis, op. cit., p. 282. 


20 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

because Nietzsche is more profoundly representative of 
certain tendencies of our age. Few in the English-speak¬ 
ing world even knew Nietzsche’s name previous to the 
Great War; but that his practical followers even among 
English-speaking people have numbered millions, no one 
can doubt who has probed deeply into the spirit of our 
time, 1 though of course few of his unconscious followers 
have had the courage of conviction or the logical consist¬ 
ency which Nietzsche had. Whatever his madness, he 
did the world the invaluable service of showing what the 
movement back toward pagan ideals logically means in its 
final development. We have quoted from him, then, be¬ 
cause he sets the problem for us. The religious* problem 
of our day, in other words, is not a problem in metaphysics 
or theology; it is a problem in the practical values of hu¬ 
man living . This Nietzsche with characteristic insight 
clearly saw and emphasized. 

Already two generations ago Comte foresaw some such 
issue, when he declared that theological Christianity was 
dying and that the first task of social science was to find 
adequate scientific supports for Christian morality. Chris¬ 
tian morality, he feared, might disintegrate with the 
decay of Christian theology, with resulting calamity to 
civilization, unless science provided for the former a 
scientific basis. Only he failed to appreciate that there 
was little chance of preserving Christian morality without 
the world’s acknowledging the leadership of Jesus. 

Let us now turn, however, from the world of opinion 
to the world of action. There we find, if anything, even 
more tangible and startling proofs of the Renaissance of 
Paganism. 2 The worst in pagan morals found constant 

1 See Chapter IV. 

* For fuller definition of “paganism,” “pagan ideals,” see Chapter IV. 


THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 


21 


and reiterated expression in the Great World War. 1 The 
War itself was, indeed, at bottom nothing hut the expres¬ 
sion of the development of pagan tendencies in the mod- 
Brn world. These tendencies came to a head in modern 
Germany, and her ruthlessness in the War only fore¬ 
shadows the “terror” which the religious revolution may 
bring to the whole world unless we succeed in establish¬ 
ing a socialized religion and morality. 

While Germany undoubtedly led in paganizing the 
world, it would be foolish to fail to see that the same 
tendencies have been at work in a marked degree in every 
nation of Christendom. Machiavellian statecraft, making 
might and expansion the sole object of international poli¬ 
tics, and the power of one class over another the chief end 
of domestic politics, has been increasingly manifest for 
the last three or four decades among Western nations. 
Behind this Machiavellian statecraft has been a ruthless 
and predatory organization of certain business interests 
that aimed only at enormous profits, either from the ex¬ 
ploitation of natural resources within the nation, or of 
foreign markets. 

In the private concerns of life reversion to lower levels 
of conduct has been not less in evidence. Marriage and 
the family life have become exploited by individuals 
simply for their own happiness and pleasure. Divorces 
have become increasingly common, 2 venereal diseases have 

1 For elaboration, see Chapter IV. 

2 Already by 1916 the official statistics showed that the divorce rate 
in the United States (one divorce to nine marriages) exceeded that 
of Japan, which previously had had the highest divorce rate of any 
great civilized nation. For fifty years the divorce rate has increased 
in the United States nearly three times as fast as population.. The 
sociological significance of this movement is not generally appreciated. 
The family is not only the chief primary group, but it is the chief 
creator and bearer of primary moral ideals. The disintegration of the 
family is, therefore, necessarily accompanied by moral disintegration. 


22 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


doubled and trebled in the population, while free love, 
temporary marriages, and polygamy bave found ardent 
advocates. 

In the realm of practical moral and religious move¬ 
ments, the religious revolution has already expressed itself 
in striking phenomena. Religious and moral agnosticism 
have become common in the sophisticated circles of so¬ 
ciety. It has become fashionable in some of these circles, 
indeed, to believe in nothing except mere negations. But 
among the less critically minded, lower forms of religion 
and ethics already have begun to appear. We find re¬ 
vivals of polytheism, of oriental mysticism, of sun wor¬ 
ship, and similar cults. 1 It is becoming evident, indeed, 
that if rational religion does not dominate in our civiliza¬ 
tion, in the long run irrational religion is bound to do 
so. 2 Nietzscheism itself may be regarded as but one of 
these irrational cults. It is scarcely necessary to mention 
that one of the striking phenomena of the Great War was 
the tendency it revealed to revert to lower forms of re¬ 
ligious beliefs and practises. Not only did the religion 
of fear tend to displace the religion of trust, and 


See my Sociology and Modern Social Problems, 1919 edition, Chapters 
IV and VIII. 

1 In a recent editorial the editor of Nature (London), commenting 
on the “remarkable recrudescence” of belief in amulets, mascots, and 
other forms of magic in present society rightly characterizes these as 
antisocial reversions to a wholly primitive mode of thought. He adds: 
“To the sociologist this phase of modern credulity is of the greatest 
moment. Religion, with the attendant moral codes, has, on the whole, 
proved one of the strongest factors in the preservation of the social 
structure. . . . Should the place of (ethical) religion be taken by a 
reversion on any extended scale to a wholly primitive mode of thought, 
the prospect affords faint hope of social security and progress.” Of 
course, the same remarks would apply equally well to any of the other 
retrogressive movements mentioned. 

3 Says Professor Hobhouse: “The history of our time shows that if 
men no longer believe in God, they will make themselves gods of 
power, of evolution, of the race, the Nation or the State” ( Meta¬ 
physical Theory of the State , p. 234). 


THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 


23 


the religion of hate the religion of love, but tendencies 
were even in evidence to revert from true monotheism to 
“henotheism.” 1 National deities were again invoked and 
found worshippers. 

Many questions connected with the religious revolution 
might here be raised. In the next chapter we shall try to 
show that religion and morality are the most profoundly 
significant things in determining the character of our 
social life, and that therefore such phenomena as those we 
have just discussed are of the utmost social import. But be¬ 
fore we attempt this it may be well to ask, whither are 
we going? What is to be the end of the religious revo¬ 
lution ? Is it to end in the negation of religion and, pos¬ 
sibly, of idealistic morality ? 

Before any one draws such a pessimistic conclusion it 
would be well to remember that while the dangers of 
serious reversion are great in any period of social transi¬ 
tion and revolution, yet they are not insurmountable, and 
if met by rational intelligence they will probably be over¬ 
come and a higher stage of development ushered in. Hu¬ 
man history, indeed, gives us every encouragement to be¬ 
lieve that this will be the result in the present crisis, if 
the sensible and rationally-minded leaders in religion and 
ethics lay aside their minor differences, close up their 
ranks, and unite in leading civilization to a higher phase 
of religion and morality. Eor the world has passed 
through many religious revolutions in the past, or at least, 
through many great religious changes, and there can be 
no doubt that hitherto the vast majority of them have been 
for the better. Neither pessimism nor foolish optimism 

i This word is used by students of religion to designate the 
nationalistic stage of religion preceding true monotheism. See next 
chapter. 


24 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


are warranted, then, in the present crisis in religion and 
ethics; but only determination on the part of religiously 
minded people, whether inside of or outside of churches, 
to meet the crisis with wisdom and rationality. 

Religion is a thing which is evolving, developing, like 
everything else in the world. 1 The type of religion which 
was suited to yesterday will not be suitable for to-morrow; 
and yet the essence of religion remains the same, as we 
shall see, while it ascends to higher and higher forms. 
Like everything else in human culture it builds itself upon 
foundations laid in the past. There is no such thing in 
civilization as a new way of human living which is not 
rooted in the past. Progress consists rather in the inven¬ 
tion or building up of new elements, institutions, or ways 
of living, through a selection and re-combination of old 
elements. But if the new is to work well there must be 
careful and rational selection of the old. We must be 
careful to see that nothing of real value for the present 
or the future is lost. This is the true policy of social 
conservation, and it applies in religion and ethics as well 
as in all other social matters. If we follow this pathway 
of “conservating” progress, w T e can never go far astray. 

No less than seven distinct stages of religious evolu¬ 
tion, of man’s conception of the divine, according to 
anthropologists, may be found in the past; namely, 
manaism, animism, totemism, ancestor worship, poly¬ 
theism, henotheism, and monotheism. 2 Each stage has 

1 Says Professor Conklin ( The Direction of Human Evolution , p. 
175) : “The fact of the evolution of religion is held by some to destroy 
its value and significance, but one might as well hold that the develop¬ 
ment of the individual destroys the value or personality or that the 
evolution of man destroys his unique superiority over all other 
creatures.” 

2 These are dealt with more fully in the next chapter (pp. 48 f.). 
They are mentioned here merely to give background to the present 
stage of the general discussion. 


THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 


25 


meant a higher conception of the universal reality in 
which man lives, and moves, and has his being. It has 
meant, also, a higher conception on the part of man of his 
own life and destiny and of his relationship to his fellow 
men. Thus far each new stage in the development of re¬ 
ligion has meant a new stage in civilization and vice versa. 
The question is, What is the next stage ? Is it “atheism,” 
as so many 1 have said ? Whither does the religious revo¬ 
lution now lead? 

It hardly needs to he pointed out to the student of civili¬ 
zation that we have scarcely yet attained to a true mono¬ 
theism ; that we left henotheism behind but yesterday, and 
that still the peoples of the world are prone to relapse into 
it. It ought, also, to be unnecessary to point out that 
monotheism itself has many stages. “Deism,” for exam¬ 
ple, the idea that God is a sort of super-engineer who 
made the universe like a great machine, was a favorite 
form of monotheism among those intellectualists of the 
eighteenth century who clung to some sort of attenuated 
religious belief. Curiously enough, we may remark in 
passing, it is the sort of religious belief which is com¬ 
monly ascribed to intelligent religious people by those who 
would reject altogether the idea of God. And it must be 
acknowledged that deism, as well as henotheism, still 
abounds in the religious life not only of so-called Chris¬ 
tian peoples, but even of members of Christian churches. 

1 So Guyau in his Non-Religion of the Future. So also Miss Jane 
Harrison, author of several brilliant studies on the social origin and 
development of religion. So Eugenio Rignano, editor of the inter¬ 
national scientific review, Scientia, and many others of many schools 
of thought. In the study referred to above, Professor Leuba found 
agnosticism and atheism very prevalent among American men of 
science. The conventional attitude of some scientific men is typically 
expressed by Sellars, who says (The Next Step in Religion, p. 217) : 
“The truth is that mankind is outgrowing theism in a gentle and 
steady way until it ceases to have any clear meaning.” 


26 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

It would be strange, indeed, if, in accordance with the 
principles which we have just laid down, we should find 
civilization transcending monotheism before it had fairly 
attained to it. The appearances are rather those of re¬ 
version to a lower stage than of evolution into a higher 
stage. The monotheistic stage of religious evolution, we 
have every reason to believe when we carefully examine 
the facts, has only just begun. Perhaps humanity may 
never attain fully to it; but if not, it will surely fall back 
to a lower form of religion. The religious revolution 
which we are now undergoing, if it does not fail and lead 
to a reversion, concerns the transition from theological to 
ethical monotheism, from a metaphysical to a social and 
scientific conception of religion. 

Monotheism is not outgrown, for rationally understood, 
it can never be outgrown; we have not yet grown into it. 
We need a more social form of it; but we cannot escape 
the necessity for faith that the system of things is not 
alien to ourselves. If man is to have a vital, social re¬ 
ligion he cannot believe that the universe is a “fool’s 
house” which will bring to naught his highest endeavors. 
He must be able to face the universal reality of which he 
is a part with confidence that it is on the side of his 
highest endeavors. It is a part of his positive scientific 
knowledge that all that he is, all that he values, all that 
is highest and best in himself, has come from that one 
universal reality. 1 It would be irrational if he did not 
believe that he could put his trust in the ascending energy 
of the universe which has created him and made possible 
his works. No; man will never cease to need a positive, 
constructive, trustful attitude toward the universe and the 
whole system of things. 2 He must have confidence in his 

1 See Chapter V, pp. 134-140. 

2 See Chapter II, pp. 59-64. 


THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 


27 


world, if lie is not to despair. He must believe in the 
possibilities and the value of life if liis energies are to be 
fully released 1 —if he is to function efficiently as a mem¬ 
ber of society, to the point, perhaps, of complete self- 
sacrifice. He must be able, in other words, to confront 
the issues of life and death with a supreme faith; but to 
do this he must project his social and personal values into 
the universal reality itself. 

Even the most primitive forms of religion did this for 
the most primitive men. Their religion braced their vital 
feeling, gave them confidence in themselves and in their 
world. The savage of to-day tells us that his religion, or, 
as in our superiority we would say, his superstition, makes 
him feel good, glad, gives him second sight, strength, suc¬ 
cess in war, and in all undertakings generally. More than 
this could scarcely be said, oftentimes, for the religion 
of even the most highly civilized individual. 

In one great respect, however, apart from the content 
of theological belief, the religion of primitive man ap¬ 
parently differed from the religion of the modern man. 
The religion of primitive man apparently dominated his 
whole life, his government, his social organization, his 
family and sex life, his education, and even his food¬ 
getting. 2 This we know remained so even in mediaeval 
Europe; and it has often been pointed out that one great 
characteristic of modern society is the complete divorce¬ 
ment of one social interest after another from religion. 
Thus industry, politics, education, science, family life, and 

1 Says Professor Hobhouse: “If we believe the whole course of 
human evolution to be without significance ... we shall place a 
lower estimate on all that makes for the control of natural conditions 
by the human mind, and a high one on all that leads to resignation 
and submission.” (The Rational Good, p. 232.) 

2 For elaboration, consult the work of Durklieim, The Elementary 
Forms of the Religious Life, especially Chapters I-IV of Book II. 


28 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


even morality itself, are said to have successively divorced 
themselves from their setting of religious feeling. 

In so far as this is a wholesome movement it may be 
questioned, however, whether the separation is not more 
formal than real. An industry, politics, education, science, 
family life, morality, which are absolutely divorced from 
religious feeling and values, must become in time intol¬ 
erable. The social life is such a unity that its values, as 
we shall try to show, must all be suffused with religious 
feeling if they are to come to the individual with the 
fullest sanction. The divorcement of politics, government, 
and the state from religion, for example, is not a divorce¬ 
ment which we need to fear, provided the individual citi¬ 
zen carries again his religious attitude back into these 
practical activities; but a government which is in no 
degree controlled by religious values would soon cease to 
be a government in accord with the conditions of man’s 
life. The so-called secularization of many activities, there¬ 
fore, only means that these activities have been divorced 
from the formal control of ecclesiastical organization. 

So far from such secularization being opposed to the 
real interests of religion, those who believe in free or 
democratic society see in this movement only opportunity 
for the vital expansion of religion. The release of these 
great human interests from formal ecclesiastical control 
gives opportunity, in other words, for vital religion, as it 
expresses itself through the conscience of the individual, 
to pervade and truly moralize these activities. To take 
another example, it has not been found that charity has 
lost any of its religious appeal or value through its being 
conducted by secular organizations or by branches of the 
state. On the contrary, by this very method the values 
of rational humanitarian religion have oftentimes been 
impressed more deeply upon the community as a whole. 


THE BELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 


29 


Ecclesiastical control must not be confused with control 
by spiritual religion. Even religion itself has profited by 
escaping from a too formal ecclesiastical control. 

Still it would be foolish to overlook the fact that this 
secularization of one phase of our social life after another, 
if not accompanied by a deepening and broadening of the 
religious life of the individual, is fraught with many 
dangers. Thus we may easily get through such separa¬ 
tion purely official and brutalized charity, a paganized, 
Machiavellian politics,—and a profits-at-any-price indus¬ 
try. Thus it comes about that the modern man with the 
immense complexity and specialization of his activities 
needs religion to safeguard his social life, if anything, 
even more than did primitive man. He needs it because 
he lives in a more complex, specialized world in which the 
difficulties of adjustment are greater. He needs it, also, 
because of his higher intellectual development which 
makes it more necessary for him to see a meaning in 
things beyond mere appearances if he is to adjust himself 
successfully to them. He needs it, finally, because stronger 
and more universal good will are necessary as social inter¬ 
dependence in a world-wide social life develops. As 
Comte said, then, man must become ever more religious, 
if he is to preserve that harmony of the inner with the 
outer which gives an abounding and satisfying life, 
whether in the group or in the individual. 

But there is no argument, some may say, for the truth 
of religion in the fact that man needs religion. If by this 
is meant that the truth of any particular religious belief 
is not demonstrated by its social utility, that we would 
admit. It is not our purpose to discuss in this book the 
question of the metaphysical truth of specific religious be¬ 
liefs, or even of the religious view of life in general. It 


30 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

is rather our purpose to point out the personal and social 
value of religion. In both science and practical life, how¬ 
ever, we do judge the truth of propositions largely by the 
way they work out in practice—by their practical value. 
If we find that we cannot act on a proposition—that it 
will not work in practice—a presumption is established 
against its truth. Science, then, no less than religion is 
positive in its attitude toward experience. It does not 
proceed wholly by doubt, hut affirms to he true what is 
tested by experience. Faith in the world of human ex¬ 
perience, when taken as a whole and its errors allowed to 
cancel one another, is the supreme faith of science. 
Science rests upon this faith. 

It is even so with sane religion. It, too, builds itself 
up out of the experience of life. If it affirms to be true 
certain beliefs and values, it is because it finds these to be 
justified by their works in the lives of men and in the 
whole structure of human society. The chief difference 
is in their history, that science has kept the open mind 
and has revised its appraisals of truth as experience has 
widened; while religion, becoming enmeshed in tradition¬ 
alism, has too often refused to do this; it has too often 
remained static while society has been evolving. It has 
too often failed to keep the open mind. 

But the religious revolution has now given religion the 
opportunity to become a dynamic rather than a static thing 
—to become “experimental,” as it were; at least, to base 
itself upon the experience and needs of men in a present 
world. Thus between positive, constructive science and 
rational, constructive religion opposition should lessen. 
When social science becomes fully positive and construc¬ 
tive, it will indeed lead to rational social religion. The 




THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 


31 


religious revolution need not, then, end in chaos and ir- 
religion. It can and should end, if guided by intelligence, 
in a new era of rational religious faith. 1 

The great English painter, Watts, symbolized the faith, 
or rather the lack of faith, of the nineteenth century in his 
picture of Llope seated blindfolded upon the earth. But 
such a view of man’s relation to the universal reality can 
hardly he taken as the final verdict of the rational mind. 
The absolute agnosticism and scepticism of the nineteenth 
century can scarcely be regarded as more than an ab¬ 
normal mental attitude brought about by the confusion 
and uncertainty of a transitional era in religious beliefs. 
The ages of faith are not past, as we are often told; for 
faith is of the very essence of normal human life. The 
ages of irrational faith, we may hope, are past or passing; 
but the age of a rational and understanding faith is still 
ahead. We need the maximum of faith, not the mini¬ 
mum ; but it must be a faith built upon facts. To reach 
such faith, we cannot turn our backs on knowledge, science, 
and revert again to mysticism. We must not fear intel¬ 
ligence. Our safety must consist in following it in build¬ 
ing up, on the facts of life, a reasonable faith. 

Says Professor Smith: “Beneath the stirrings and seeth- 
ings of modern unrest, one discerns dimly the outlines of 
a religion which shall trust in the larger future instead 
of being bound literally to the past; which shall glory in 
the capacity of man to use God’s resources to remake this 
world instead of inculcating a passive dependence on 
supernatural forces which lie out of man’s reach; which 
shall develop scientific control into a mighty instrument 

’Professor G. B. Smith is undoubtedly right in his contention (in 
his Social Idealism and the Changing Theology) that the world 
revealed by modern science is richer in possibilities of reasonable 
religious faith than the old supernatural world ever was. 


32 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


for the welfare of man instead of uttering warnings 
against the ‘dangers’ of scientific theories.” 1 

To sketch the outlines of such a religion, will be the 
task of the succeeding chapters. 

1 Social Idealism and the Changing Theology, p. 154. 


CHAPTER II 


THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RBLIGION 

“Moralities and religions,” said Nietzsche with char¬ 
acteristic insight, “are the principal means by which one 
can modify men into whatever one likes,” provided, he 
added, that one is given time enough in which to do it. 
Yet nothing is perhaps more openly questioned to-day than 
the social power of religion. It is not our purpose to go 
fully into the psychology and sociology of religion, but 
we must know something about the real nature of religion 
before we can understand its significance for the social 
life of man. This is the first thing necessary in consid¬ 
ering the reconstruction of religion. 

No one can doubt the power of religion in exceptional 
individual cases. St. Simeon Stylites lived at the top of 
a sixty foot pillar for thirty years without descending. 
The Hindu fakir holds his fist closed until the nails of 
his fingers grow through the back of his hand. Both these 
feats would seem incredible were they not well-authenti¬ 
cated facts; 1 and indeed they could only be possible 
through religious fanaticism. The power of “fixed ideas” 
is a familiar fact of abnormal psychology. The “religious 
psychosis,” as we might call it, has produced more mira- 

1 The scientific facts for the interpretation of religion are, of course, 
as broad as human history. The literature of anthropology especially 
abounds in them. Perhaps the best collection of scientific material on 
religion is to be found in the monumental Hastings: Encyclopedia of 
Religion and Ethics, though the articles are of unequal value. See 
especially the articles on <r Religion,” “Animism,” “Ancestor Wor¬ 
ship,” etc. Godd biblicfgra^phiCs accompany each article. 

33 


34 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

cles in human behavior than even the most enthusiastic 
advocate of religion has ever given it credit for. 1 Not 
only have, by means of it, drunkards and criminals been 
reformed, prostitutes been led to lead a pure life, sinners 
in general made to repent, the sick made well, hut the 
character of whole communities has been radically altered, 
even transformed, in the course of a few years. Such 
facts as these are not open to even scientific doubt, because 
they are checked up by overwhelming evidence on the one 
hand, and by the general principles of normal and ab¬ 
normal psychology on the other hand. 

Indeed, when we examine the matter, we find that re¬ 
ligion has entered into the warp and woof of every civili¬ 
zation that the world has known. Sociology and anthro¬ 
pology show that this was not due to accident. What 
makes civilization is the mass of habits and traditions 
handed down with constant accumulations from generation 
to generation. But these habits and traditions cannot be 
thus passed on in human society without strong social 
sanctions attached to them. They are passed on, in other 
words, as customs, as traditional beliefs, values, and 
standards; in brief, as “mores.” Now the mores of a 
people are all-powerful, but they are such only because 
they are embedded in religious sanctions. 2 They begin 

1 Perhaps the best easily accessible collection of facts on the effect 
of religion on individual behavior is to be found in James’s Varieties 
of Religious Experience, Lectures IV to XV inclusive. 

a Durkheim’s view (set forth in his Elementary Forms of the 
Religious Life) that primitive religion is the original matrix out of 
which have developed government, law, morality, philosophy, science, 
art, etc., is, of course, correct if we enlarge our conception of religion 
so that it means “the mores regarded as sacred.” More narrowly, 
however, religion is a peculiar sanction given to the mores. For 
exposition of the sociology of the mores, see Sumner’s classical work. 
Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, 
Manners, Customs, Mores and Morals, especially Chapters I and II. 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION 35 


to crumble and disintegrate as soon as the particular re¬ 
ligious belief or sanction which accompanied them passes 
away. But with them crumbles and disintegrates the civi¬ 
lization of which they were a part. We have no record of 
a civilization which long endured which did not have this 
religious setting for its mores; nor of any which endured 
long after this setting was dissolved. 1 The full reasons 
for this will become evident as we proceed. Our argu¬ 
ment, however, will be seen not to rest upon the uncertain 
foundations of an historical induction, but rather upon 
fundamental laws of human nature and human society. 

But, it may be said, tlie very illustrations just used show 
that religion is as frequently a power for evil as for good; 
or even that it is reactionary, and belongs to the irrational 
in human life. That it has been very frequently in the 
past a power for evil and for unreason, no sane student 
of religion or of human society would deny. Our only 
contention is that religion is a real power in human life, 
and one that cannot be dispensed with in the more complex 
stages of social evolution, even though it may be made 
to serve the evil as well as the good. By the same token 
that it may become a power for evil it may be made a 
power for good. All human history, in one sense, indeed, 
has been a search for a rational and social religion. Very 
early even in primitive ages those religious beliefs and 
practices which did not meet with the approbation of the 
community as a whole were outlawed and branded as 
“black magic.” 2 So to-day we still brand as magic or 

1 Hubbard in The Fate of Empires, Part II, assembles some of the 
evidence. 

3 See Marett: The Threshold of Religion, especially Chapter III; 
also his Anthropology, pp. 209-212. The general view of magic now 
held by a majority of anthropologists is that it sprang originally 
from the same fundamental processes in the primitive mind as 
religion. “The two fundamental concepts underlying both magic and 
religion are those of spirit and power.” But magic and religion early 


36 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


superstition forms of religion which are manifestly an¬ 
tagonistic to the welfare of the particular community 
which passes judgment upon them. Religion in the 
strictest sense, as sociologically distinguished from magic 
and superstition, has always been beliefs and practices 
which the community approves. 1 The struggle for a ra¬ 
tional and social religion in our new world of science and 
of complex social relations is still essentially to-day what 
it has been in the past: it is a struggle to find a religion 
adapted to the requirements of present life. 

But, again, it may be said that while religion has un¬ 
questionably been a power in the past social life of man, 
it is a dangerous power, seeing that it may work for the 
evil as well as the good, for reaction as well as for prog¬ 
ress ; and so is one which civilization cannot too soon get 
rid of. We no longer need “the religious psychosis/ 1 
with its tendencies toward fanaticism or “fixed ideas’ 1 in 
our present humanitarian civilization. We especially no 
longer need it if our social life is to become rationalized, 
because it is the antithesis of reason. 2 Statements like 
these, which we hear so frequently to-day, show a strange 
blindness to the actual facts of life, and remind one of 
that narrow “rationalism 11 of the eighteenth century which 
made man so entirely an abstract intellectual creature. 
Men still need help in life as much as in the ages gone 

differentiated, magic becoming mechanical, impersonal, individualistic, 
while religion became spiritual, institutional, and congregational or 
collective. 

1 For a different view of magic see Leuba, A Psychological Study of 
Religion, Part II, especially Chapter IX. 

2 Compare, e. g., Bury’s statement (History of Freedom of Thought, 
p. 229): “Religion is gradually becoming less indispensable. The 
further we go back in the past, the more valuable is religion as an 
element in civilization; as we advance, it retreats more and more into 
the background, to be replaced by science.” For full criticism of this 
view, see pages 59-64 of this book. 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION 37 

by. They do not and cannot live by reason alone, as we 
have already pointed out, but need some sort of faith in 
unseen powers, which we term “religion.” The end of 
all religion is in social and personal salvation, in help 
over the difficulties and redemption from the evils of life. 
Like the mind itself, religion exists to meet the needs of 
life, and it is essentially an adaptive device of life; like 
reason, it exists in particular to meet the needs of life in 
very complex situations, in “crises,” where the lower 
processes of body and mind are inadequate to cope with 
the situation. 1 Exactly how it does this we shall see later. 
It will suffice now to point out that religion braces vital 
feeling, that it taps new levels of energy, and gives one 
thus strength, as we have seen, to perform deeds far be¬ 
yond what are commonly regarded as normal human 
powers. 

Now, so far as we can see, the time will never come 
when man will not have need of religion to release fully 
his energies, to brace his vital feeling, and to help him 
face the issues of life and death with confidence in him¬ 
self and in his world. The dream which the hedonistic 
philosophers of the nineteenth century had of a “pleasure 
economy,” in which there would be no need of the help 
which religion can give, because the difficulties and evils 
of life would be all overcome, has been rudely shattered. 
Not only has the World War shown that there is as much 
need of faith, loyalty, and self-devotion in the world as 


1 That religion is wholly a social matter, purely a social product, as 
Durkheim apparently claims (in his Elementary Forms of the Re¬ 
ligious Life ), is a theory which will not bear close scientific scrutiny. 
On the contrary, like reason, religion has both individual and social 
roots and manifestations. A scientific view of religion must be found 
in a synthesis of Durkheim’s sociological view and the psychological 
view, as set forth for example in James’s Varieties of Religious 
Experience. For a criticism of Durkheim’s view see Webb’s Group 
Theories of Religion and the Individual , especially Chapters I-IV. 


38 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

ever, but a deeper understanding of the nature of the 
social life itself has revealed that, whether mankind is 
at peace or at war, this will always be so. 

The nature of our social life, in other words, is such 
that if progress is to continue it demands constantly 
the service and sacrifice of individuals for the good of 
humanity. 1 Each generation builds, as we have seen, 
upon the work of previous generations, and it is only 
through a policy of social conservation and of productive, 
efficient social service that civilization can be preserved 
and continually advanced. In each new generation the 
increasing complexity of the social life will call for 
heroism, self-devotion, and self-sacrifice for the good of 
humanity as in previous generations. Crises in life will 
not cease through human progress, nor will man come 
to need less the power of self-sacrifice. The world will 
never cease to need, in other words, clean, high-minded, 
self-devoted, self-sacrificing human living. The “soft” 
view of life, which was so popular in the ease-loving and 
self-indulgent pre-war days, has proved itself to be an 
unworkable view. The hedonistic utopia of a “pleasure 
economy” just ahead, in which no one would have to work 
harder, or behave better, than he wanted to, is seen to be 
a chimera. Men will always need for efficient, worth¬ 
while human living, full command of their adaptive 
powers; and highest among these, standing side by side, 
as it were, yet often in these later days made strangely 
to antagonize each other, are religion and reason. 

Eor what is religion? Why do we compare it as an 
adaptive process in the human mind to reasoning itself ? 

1 See Novicow, Mechanism and Limits of Human Association 
(translation in American Journal of Sociology , November, 1917); 
also The Social Problem, 1919 edition, pp. 273-280, and Introduction 
to Social Psychology, pp. 323-328. 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION 39 

Let us see what religion does, and then we shall perhaps 
in part understand it. But let us first distinguish re¬ 
ligion from theology on the one hand and ecclesiastical 
organization on the other. Theologies are products of re¬ 
ligion in interaction with man’s reason and imagination, 
hut they are not themselves religion. Theologies as intel¬ 
lectual attempts at the interpretation of religion, appear 
and disappear; but religion remains. Religions have often 
existed without any well defined theological beliefs, though 
at other stages of the evolution of religion theological 
creeds may be the chief thing emphasized. While re¬ 
ligions always imply metaphysical or theological beliefs 
of some sort, no specific theological belief is an essential 
part of religion. 1 While religion affirms and univer¬ 
salizes personal and social values, it does so in a practical 
sense without necessarily developing them into theological 
or metaphysical dogmas. 

Neither must religion be confused with ecclesiastical 
organization, that is, with the church and its ritual. The 
church is the organized embodiment, the institutional 
expression, of religious life. It is probably necessary to 
the social expression of religion, but it is not itself re¬ 
ligion. Thus the Christian church, which we ordinarily 
call historical Christianity, must not he confused with 
Christianity itself. But if religion is neither theology nor 
ecclesiastical organization, what is religion apart from 
these? And what does it do apart from the creating of 
theologies and ecclesiastical systems? 

In the first place, religion projects the essential values 
of human personality and of human society into the uni¬ 
verse as a whole. It inevitably arises as soon as man tries 

1 For elaboration and qualification, see pages 45 and 46 and also 
Chapter V. 


40 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


to take a valuing attitude toward his universe, no matter 
how small and mean that universe may appear to him. 
Like all the distinctive things in human social and mental 
life, it, of course, rests upon the higher intellectual powers 
of man. Man is the only religious animal, because 
through his powers of abstract thought and reasoning, he 
alone is self-conscious in the full sense of that term. 
Hence he alone is able to project his values into the uni¬ 
verse and finds necessity of so doing. Given, in other 
words, the intellectual powers of man, the mind at once 
seeks to universalize its values as well as its ideas. Just 
as rationalizing processes give man a world of universal 
ideas, so religious processes give man a world of universal 
values. The religious processes are, indeed, nothing but 
the rationalizing processes at work upon man’s impulses 
and emotions rather than upon his percepts. What the 
reason does for ideas, religion does, then, for the feelings. 
It universalizes 1 them; and in universalizing them, it 
brings them into harmony with the whole of reality. For 
the mind to refuse thus to universalize its values is, 
in a sense, very much like the mind refusing to univer¬ 
salize its intellectual conceptions. There has always been, 
indeed, then, a close relation between irreligion and intel¬ 
lectual agnosticism, as all the world has long since ob¬ 
served. 

We are now prepared to see more exactly what religion 
is in psychological terms. It is primarily a valuing atti¬ 
tude, universalizing the will and the emotions 2 rather than 

1 So also it “socializes” them. The process of “universalization” of 
course includes the process of “socialization,” only the whole of 
reality, including the community of human beings, becomes the reality 
to which adjustment is made. Why the universe as well as humanity 
must always be included in religious valuations is set forth on page 
46 and also in Chapter V. 

* This idea, that the psychological function of religion is to uni¬ 
versalize the will and the emotions, is, of course, a very old one, 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF KELIGION 41 


the ideas of man. It thus harmonizes man, on the side 
of will and emotion, with his world. Hence, it is the 
foe of pessimism and despair. It encourages hope, and 
gives confidence in the battle of life, to the savage as well 
as to the civilized man. It does so, as we have said, 
because it braces vital feeling; and psychologists tell us 
that the reason why it braces vital feeling is because it is 
an adaptive process in which all of the lower centers of 
life are brought to reinforce the higher centers. The 
universalization of values means, in other words, in 
psycho-physical terms, that the lower nerve centers pour 
their energies into the higher nerve centers, thus har¬ 
monizing and bringing to a maximum of vital efficiency 
life on its inner side. It is thus that religion taps new 
levels of energy, for meeting the crises of life, while at 
the same time it brings about a deeper harmony between 
the inner and the outer. 

When we thus understand religion scientifically we 
see that it is as natural to man, and almost as necessary, 
as sleeping, eating, or breathing. But we must qualify 
this statement by saying that religion is essentially a social 
rather than an individual matter. Like language it is 
not so much necessary for the life of the individual as 
for the life of society. This is because the values with 
which it deals, which it projects and universalizes, are 
not simply personal values; they are social values. They 
are values in which an individual participates because 
he is a member of a group. They are values, in other 
words, which have been built up through the common life 

going back even to Greek and Hindu philosophy, but it is rarely 
found clearly stated. That the valuing attitude is the root of all 
religion is now one of the commonplaces of religious psychology. 
Sellars (The Next Step in Religion, p. 7) even goes so far as to 
define religion simply as “loyalty to the values of life.” 


42 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

of a group and transmitted by tradition from generation 
to generation, because they have to do with the life of the 
group. Values and feelings have more need to be uni¬ 
versalized on the side of the social environment than on 
the side of the physical environment. It is one’s human 
world to which one has to adapt himself first of all; and 
' this adaptation is effected largely through the feelings 
or emotions. Then, again, the life of the group itself, 
sociology shows, is a unity. In confronting its environ¬ 
ment and the many foes which are often found there, the 
group must have unity of feeling, of values, if it is to 
have unity of action, among its members. The group as 
a whole needs not only such inner harmony on the side 
of feeling, but it must command the full energy, the 
unfailing devotion, of all of its members. Its values, 
its emphasis upon the meaning of life, of service, and of 
sacrifice, must be brought to the individual in the intensest 
way, with that absolute sanction which religion gives, 
if it is to command that self-effacing devotion of its 
members in times of crisis. The universalization of feel¬ 
ing and will which religion effects is necessarily therefore 
a universalization which includes first of all the common 
life which the individual shares with his fellows. In 
other words, it is a “socialization” of feeling and will. 1 

The second thing, then, which religion does is to act 
as an agency of social control, that is, of the group con¬ 
trolling the life of the individual, for what is believed 

f 

1 No writer has worked out more clearly the interrelation of 
religion and social life than Professor Ames in his Psychology of 
Religious Experience. See especially Parts II and IV. His view that 
religion is “the consciousness of the highest social values” (p. VII), 
is one of the cornerstones of the sociology of religion. See also Miss 
Harrison’s Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion , 
especially pp. 482-402. “Religion,” says Miss Harrison, “sums and 
embodies what we feel together, what we care for together, what we 
imagine together.” 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION 43 


to be the good of the larger life of the group. Very 
early, as we have seen, any beliefs and practices which 
gave expression to personal feelings or values of which 
the group did not approve were branded as “black magic” 
or baleful superstitions; and if this had not been done 
it is evident that the unity of the life of the group might 
have become seriously impaired. Thus the almost neces¬ 
sarily social character of religion stands revealed. We 
cannot have such a thing as purely personal or individual 
religion which is not at the same time social. For we 
live a social life and the welfare of the group is, after all, 
the chief matter of concern. 

It is evident that this function of religion as a means 
of social control over the individual needs to increase 
rather than decrease as social evolution advances. For 
social life becomes more complex with each succeeding 
stage of upward development, and groups have more need 
of commanding the unfailing "devotion of their members 
if they are to maintain their unity and efficiency as 
groups. More and more, therefore, religion in its evolu¬ 
tion has come to emphasize the self-effacing devotion of 
the individual to the group in times of crisis. And as 
the complexity of social life increases, the crises in which 
the group must ask the unfailing service and devotion 
of its members also increase. Thus religion in its upward 
evolution becomes increasingly social, until it finally 
comes to throw supreme emphasis upon the life of service 
and of self-sacrifice for the sake of service; and as the 
group expands from the clan and the tribe to humanity, 
religion becomes less tribal and more humanitarian, 
until the supreme object of the devotion which it incul¬ 
cates must manifestly be the whole of humanity. 

Looked at from the point of view of the individual, in 


44 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


the third place, then, religion means the consecration of 
individual life, at first for clan and tribal ends, but 
finally for humanitarian ends. 1 This consecration, or 
making “sacred,” of life conserves the powers and ener¬ 
gies of the individual for social uses. It again unifies 
the group and makes it efficient in confronting every 
situation. We do not mean, of course, that it unerringly 
does so, because the ends to which the individual may be 
asked to consecrate his life may be mistaken ends. The 
values which are socially sanctioned may not be the 
highest values; they may be false altogether. Neverthe¬ 
less, by this consecration of life on the part of the indi¬ 
vidual to the ends or values of which the group approves, 
such efficiency as is possible for the group is attained. As 
the social life increases in complexity and expands from 
the clan and the tribe to humanity, it is evident that no 
less consecration of life on the part of the individual is 
demanded, but rather more. And we may so far antici¬ 
pate our conclusion as to point out that when the group 
becomes humanity, and social values become scientifically 
determined, the consecration of individual life which 
religion necessarily means may be more cheerfully given 
by the individual; for he will have the satisfaction of 
knowing that such consecration is for the highest pur¬ 
poses. Thus becomes evident, too, our meaning when we 
say that the individual must become increasingly re¬ 
ligious if he is to become increasingly social. Comte, 
as we have already seen, perceived this truth, though for 

1 “The essence of religion,” says Professor Cooley, “is the expansion 
of the soul into the sense of a Greater Life; and the way to this is 
through that social expansion which is of the same nature. One who 
has developed a spirit of loyalty, service and sacrifice toward a social 
group has only to transform this to a larger conception in order to 
have a religious spirit.” (Social Process , p. 75.) 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION 45 


various reasons it has escaped the perception of many 
later sociologists. 

A fourth phase of religion stands revealed as we come 
to understand what religion does. Religion, we have said, 
emphasizes values; it universalizes them and brings them 
to the mind of the individual in the intensest way. But 
the values which it has come to sanction are social values, 
values which pertain to the larger life, and finally to the 
life of all humanity. Now these mental and social values, 
with which religion deals, men call “spiritual.” 1 It is 
something which emphasizes, as we may say, spiritual 
values, that is, the values connected especially with the 
personal and social life. It projects these values, as we 
have seen, into the universal reality. It gives man a 
social and moral conception of the universe, rather than 
a merely mechanical one as a theatre of the play of blind, 
purposeless forces. While religion is not primarily ani¬ 
mistic philosophy, as has often been said, nevertheless 
it does project mind, spirit, life, into all things. 2 Even 
the most primitive religion did this; for in primitive 
dynamism” there was a feeling of the psychic, in such 
concepts as mana or manitou. They were closely con¬ 
nected with persons and proceeded from persons, or things 
which were viewed in an essentially personal way. 
Religion, therefore, is a belief in the reality of spiritual 
values / and projects them, as we have said, into the whole 

1 It will be observed that we use this word in the broad or philo¬ 
sophical sense, as practically synonymous with “psychic,” not in the 
narrow sense of “pertaining to spirits.” 

* Using “animism” in this broad sense (for the technical meaning 
of the term, see page 50), Carpenter very rightly says (Pagan and 
Christian Creeds , p. 260) : “Animism is a perfectly sensible, logical 
and necessary attitude of the human mind.” Compare McDougall, 
Body and Mind. 

* This again is a very old view of religion, reflected imperfectly in 
Tylor’s celebrated minimum definition of religion, “Belief in spiritual 


46 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

universe. All religion—even so-called atheistic reli¬ 
gions 1 —emphasizes the spiritual, believes in its domi¬ 
nance, and looks to its ultimate triumph. Materialistic 
and mechanistic philosophies, therefore, at least those 
cruder forms which would deny altogether or explain 
away the reality of the spiritual element, are hostile to 
religion. They take a negative attitude toward the 
spiritual element in the universe and in human life, and 
therefore destroy the rational basis for that projection 
into universal reality of personal and social values which 
constitutes the essence of religion. Religion from its 
very nature cannot negate life or mind; it cannot take 
a negative attitude toward the universe. Its attitude 
is an attitude of faith, courage and confidence. 2 It em¬ 
phasizes, therefore, the reality of spiritual things; it is 
built up through belief in the reality of spiritual life. 
Mere animistic philosophy, to be sure, it is not; for it 
is always primarily a valuing attitude. But it is an 
affirmation of the reality of the spiritual, the mental, 
the social; and only in a few cases has it denied the reality 
of the material and the physical. 


Thus we see that religion, springing as it does from the 
whole of human nature and the whole social life of man, 

beings,” and implied in Eucken’s works, especially in his Christianity 
and the New Idealism , Chapter I. Leuba (A Psychological Study of 
Religion, p. 52) is undoubtedly right in contending that religion pre¬ 
supposes belief in personal or non-personal psychic powers. 

1 For example, Buddhism, Jainism, and Comte’s Positivism. All 
these religions manifestly emphasize the reality and power of the 
spiritual in man. 

2 “Religion,” says Conklin ( The Direction of Human Evolution , 
p. 1G2), “cultivates faith, hope and love”—at least, we may add, when 
it is socially normal. We might add that religion in its normal 
aspects is a sort of idealization of the life process—a kind of “cosmic 
optimism,” so to speak. It necessarily includes, therefore, “an im¬ 
plicit theory of the universe,” as Webb points out (in Group Theories 
of Religion and the Individual). 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION 47 

is a many-sided phenomenon. (1) In one aspect it is par¬ 
ticipation in, and universalization of, the ideal values 
of the social life. (2) In another aspect it is a form of 
social control, constraining through supernatural sanction 
the individual to conform his beliefs and actions to those 
of his group. (3) In another aspect it is a consecration of 
individual life and energies to social ends. (4) Finally, it 
is an affirmation of the reality of “the spiritual,” and a 
belief in its ultimate dominance and triumph in human 
life. We may, perhaps, accept as nearly synthetizing the 
truth in all of these conceptions of religion, the state¬ 
ment that “religion is man’s attitude toward the universe 
regarded as a social and ethical force.” 1 Some attitude 
of this sort, some religious attitude, in other words, is 
necessary to every thinking man who does not, ostrich¬ 
like, refuse to confront the reality in which he lives and 
moves and has his being. But the religious attitude, 
evidently, must undergo many changes with the develop¬ 
ment of man’s mind and civilization. 

A detailed study of religious evolution would, of course, 

1 Barton, The Religions of the World, p. 3. Compare Caird’s 
definition ( The Evolution of Religion, vol. I, p. 30) : “A man’s 
/eligion is the expression of his ultimate attitude to the universe, 
the summed up meaning and purport of his whole consciousness of 
things.” The synthetic nature of religion as a cultural complex is 
what gives rise to the many one-sided conceptions of religion and its 
/nany various definitions. (For a brief survey of the various 
definitions of religion, see Leuba’s Psychological Study of Religion, 
Appendix.) It is doubtful if even in its earliest beginnings religion 
can be reduced to simple psychological elements. From its very start 
it seems a synthesis (like so many other cultural complexes) of the 
individual psychic and the social. Thus Carpenter in criticizing the 
view of Miss Harrison ( Themis, pp. 482-92) that religion is simply 
the reflection of the social conscience very rightly says ( Pagan and 
Christian Creeds, p. 261) : “Keligion has its origin not only from 
unity with the Tribe, but from the sense of affiliation to Nature.” 
This may be implied even by Miss Harrison when she says ( Themis, 
p. 482) : “It is not herd instinct, nor the collective conscience, not 
the social imperative that constitutes religion; it is the emphasis 
and representation of this collective conscience 


48 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


be necessary to reveal all of these changes and the full 
significance of religion in human society. That the 
limits of this work forbid; but some sort of outline of the 
changes in religion and of the functioning of religion in 
the social life is necessary for a clear understanding of 
our subject. No one can understand religion, as ha3 
been well said, without understanding other religions 
than his own, any more than one can understand language 
without understanding other languages than his own. 
All religions are vitally related. 1 From the most highly 
developed to the most lowly there are intellectual clews 
running back which are of the utmost value for the under¬ 
standing of the relations of religion to civilization. Let 
us very briefly sketch, therefore, the evolution of re¬ 
ligion. 

If we take the commonly accepted seven stages of re¬ 
ligious evolution, namely, pre-animism, animism, totem- 
ism, ancestor worship, polytheism, henotheism, and mono¬ 
theism, it is not difficult to see that they not only embody 
man’s valuation of his world but also the social values 
of the age which they represent. These seven stages are, 
of course, in human history not clearly delimited. 2 They 
overlap and even exist side by side ; but they mark, logic¬ 
ally, definite stages in the evolution of the religious con¬ 
sciousness. 

1 See Marett, Anthropology, Chapter VIII. 

2 The presentation of these seven types of the religious consciousness, 
as an evolutional series, has been vigorously criticized of late (see 
Schleiter, Religion and Culture). In reality the series is psycho¬ 
logical rather than chronological. It is easy, therefore, to find peoples 
low in culture among whom several of these types of religious con¬ 
sciousness exist alongside of one another and more or less confused. 
This is, indeed, the usual situation. There are good psychological 
grounds, however, for believing that the psychological order of 
filiation is that here presented though it is impossible to present 
inductive proof of this, as the religious beliefs of even existing 
savages are an indefinite mixture of the first three or four types. 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION 49 

Thus anthropologists tell us that there is every reason 
to believe that the earliest and most primitive stage of 
religion was the stage in which men simply believed 
in the pervasion of nature everywhere by a mysteri¬ 
ous wonder-working energy, such as the manitou of the 
American Indian or the mana of the Melanesian Is¬ 
landers. 1 It was in this stage, which may be desig¬ 
nated as that of pre-animism, or “manaism,” that the 
conception of the Sacred’’ or “divine” arose. 2 This may 
be illustrated by the Melanesians’ use of the word mana. 
This word was used by the Melanesians to signify a power 
or influence not visible, and in a way supernatural, show¬ 
ing itself in connection with both persons and natural 
objects. 3 Fear and reverence were always attached to 
any person or thing which manifested mana, and thus 
such persons or things were “taboo;” 4 and upon this idea 
of taboo the whole conception of the “sacred” as a means 

1 Miss Ivy G. Campbell in her study of “Manaism” ( American 
Journal of Psychology, January, 1918), concludes that “manaism as 
well as animism results from the tendency of the human mind to 
interpret things in terms of its own inner experience.” Manaism, she 
says, therefore, is not prior to animism if animism equals “the read¬ 
ing of one’s own experience into other things.” Dr. Marett, however, 
using the word “animism” in its more exact sense, finds ( The 
Threshold of Religion) that prior to animism proper there must have 
been a more primitive stage of animatism, that is to say, “manaism.” 
So, too, Professor Boas says ( Handbook of American Indians) that 
the fundamental concept of the religious life is “the belief in the 
existence of magic power which may influence the life of man and 
which in turn may be influenced by human activity.” 

a Dr. Marett says ( The Threshold of Religion, Second Edition, 
p. XXXIII) : “I do not hesitate to regard the general notion exempli¬ 
fied by mana as the category that most nearly expresses the essence of 
rudimentary religion.” But he wisely adds, “What I would not be 
prepared to lay down dogmatically or even provisionally is merely 
that there was a pre-animistic era in the history of religion when 
animism was not.” See also Chapter I of his book. 

* Codrington, The Melanesians, p. 118 following. 

4 Marett rightly holds that “Tabu is the negative mode of the 
supernatural, to which mama corresponds as the positive mode.” See 
The Threshold of Religion , Chapter IV, on “The Conception of Mana.” 


50 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

of social control seems to have been built up. The world 
was filled, in other words, with a mysterious, wonder¬ 
working energy which was the source of all success, luck, or 
good fortune, and which must be dealt with in a certain 
way in order to insure these desirable effects both for 
the individual and for the community. The American 
Indian had much the same conception in such words 
as manitou 1 and wakonda/ and among many other primi¬ 
tive peoples we find parallel conceptions. Nothing was 
more important for the individual or the community 
in this stage than to get into right relations with this 
mysterious, wonder-working power which assured good 
or bad fortune. Hence already, though there were no 
“gods,” the whole mental and social machinery of re¬ 
ligion was at work with respect to the mores in the way 
which we have already described. 

The second stage of religion came when this mysterious, 
wonder-working power was conceived of as a “double” or 
a “spirit” which resided in men, animals, and things. 
This stage is technically known as “animism” in the 
strict sense. The mysterious, wonder-working power was 
conceived as able to exist apart from the object in which 
it resided. Thus was born the conception of the “soul,” 
a conception which was bound to be reached by man’s 
power of abstraction, but which was made easier through 
man’s reflection upon the experiences of his dream-world. 3 
Out of the dualism of the ordinary and the extraordinary, 
the natural and the supernatural, grew the further dualism 

1 See the classical paper by Jones, The Algonkin Manitou, included 
in Thomas, Source Book for Social Origins, pp. 683-692. 

a See articles, “Wakonda” and also “Orenda” in Handbook of 
American Indians. 

* For a brief critical discussion of animism, with a statement of 
divergent theories, see Leuba, Psychological Study of Religion, 
Chapters IV and V. 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION 61 


of the physical and the spiritual; and the mysterious, 
wonder-working powers were identified with the spiritual 
beings, the “souls” or “doubles” of men, animals, and 
things. A further step in the development of religion 
is shown in animism, because man more definitely inter¬ 
prets his world in terms of himself, of his will, and of 
his values. This stage prepared religion to develop and 
emphasize the subjective element, and to make that the 
chief element in social control. 

A third stage of religious development was “totemism,” 
in which animals or plants became the chief objects of 
religious veneration. 1 The totemic stage arose naturally 
from the manaistic and the animistic, and marked a 
broadening of man’s knowledge concerning his world. It 
was correlated with the hunting stage of economic devel¬ 
opment. Man was surrounded by animals, he hunted 
animals, he lived on animals, he thought in terms of ani¬ 
mals, and therefore, his main objects of religious venera¬ 
tion were animals. It was the zoomorphic stage of re¬ 
ligion. 2 The mysterious, wonder-working power was the 


1 The controversy over the relation of totemism to religion has been 
prolonged and varied. Many writers (e. g., Frazer in his well-known 
work, Totemism and Exogamy , vol. IV, p. 27) have denied that 
totemism may be considered a form of religion at all. Durkheim, on 
the other hand, in his Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Book 
II, makes totemism the root or original form of all religion and 
identifies its fundamental concept with mana. The general view of 
anthropologists, however, is that there was a pre-totemic stage in 
which manaism and animism in various forms existed. On the 
relations of manaism and totemism, see Marett, op. cit. p. 20 f., and 
the article “Totem” by Hewitt in the Handbook of American Indians. 
The best brief study of totemism is probably that by Professor A. A. 
Goldenweiser, “Totemism: An Analytical Study,” in the Journal of 
American Folk Lore, vol. XXIII. For an extended discussion of 
totemism as a form of religion, see Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of 
the Religious Life, Book I, Chapter IV, and Book II. 

* Much animal and plant worship, however, exists independent of 
totemism. For criticism of the idea that totemism involves the 
worship of the totemic animal or plant, see Durkheim, op. cit. p. 139. 


52 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


animal or plant which was regarded with religious rever¬ 
ence and conceived of as having some mysterious relation 
to the group, which usually bore its name. Kinship and 
religion now become definitely allied, and hence we may 
say that this was the first stage in which religion came to 
have an organized control over all the forms and relation¬ 
ships of social life. Art, educaton and food-getting, 
also, now come under well-defined religious control. 

The fourth stage of religious development, the hero- 
ancestor-worshipping stage, did not arise until the patri¬ 
archal family and pastoral industry, together with the 
power of the war chief, emphasized the human element. 
Thus the anthropomorphic stage of religious evolution 
was reached. 1 The mysterious, wonder-working powers 
were now conceived to he the souls of departed heroes or 
ancestors. Each family had its own gods and its own do¬ 
mestic worship. This stage fostered the development of 
the domestic virtues, accordingly, and of the social ideals 
derived from the domestic virtues; but it had a great 
drawback in that, by apotheosizing the departed ancestor, 
it emphasized too much the values of the past. Religion 
took on an ultra-conservative nature and made possible 
such static civilization as was, for example, illustrated 

In Chapters V-VII of Book II, Durkheim criticizes the idea that 
totemism is a development of animism. See also W. W. Thomas’ 
article on “Animals” in Hastings’ Encyclopedia of Religion wnd 
Ethics. 

1 That is, the typical or developed anthropomorphism. Some degree 
of anthropomorphism is, of course, to be found in the earlier stages 
of religious development. Thus the attitude of the savage toward 
his totem animal is as personal as toward one of his tribesmen. Per¬ 
haps the great significance of ancestor worship in religious and social 
development has never been better stated than in Herbert Spencer’s 
Principles of Sociology, Part I, though Spencer was mistaken in 
supposing ancestor worship to be primitive. The best picture of an 
ancestor-worshipping society is to be found in Fustel de Coulange’s 
Ancient City. 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION 53 


for centuries by the Chinese. The abuses of religion, 
from a social point of view, now begin to appear. 

When small ancestor-worshipping groups were welded 
into city-states or small nations, the gods of the different 
groups, who included not only the heroic ancestors of the 
past, but also many nature spirits whose worship had 
survived from animistic times, formed a “pantheon” and 
we have the stage of religion which is known as “poly¬ 
theism.” In this stage there is a classification of gods. 
Not every blade of grass had a god, but there might be a 
god of the grass. Neither did every man have a god, 
but there was a god for practically every social activity 
of man, a god of war, a god of love, etc. All were highly 
personalized beings, and the community of gods was con¬ 
ceived as more or less like the community of men, though 
often idealized. This stage was really transitional, and 
is marked hy a confusion of ethical and religious concep¬ 
tions and values. There was in it, therefore, the oppor¬ 
tunity for the sanction of all sorts of practices, and the 
abuses of religion become more manifest, as seen, for ex¬ 
ample, in the various practices of idolatry. 

Out of polytheism slowly developed another interme¬ 
diary stage of religion known as “henotheism,” in which 
one of the gods of the pantheon was chosen by a people 
as its particular national god, without their denying at 
first, however, the existence of other gods. Gradually 
the other gods came to be regarded as “false gods” and 
the national god as the true god. Most monotheistic 
peoples have passed through this henotheistic stage, though 
students of religion have sometimes failed to recognize it. 
The early Jews, for example, before the later prophets 
were unquestionably henotheistic. This national stage 
of religion served greatly to unify peoples in strong 
nationalistic groups. It is a serious question whether 


54 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

our civilization is not yet mainly in this stage of religion. 
Religion in this stage is crudely anthropomorphic, and 
the deity is thought of as having the national character 
of the people with very definite human traits. 

True monotheism is reached only when the mind of man 
sees that there is but one universal existence from whence 
all things, including his own mind, have proceeded and of 
which they are a part. Monotheism, in other words, is 
the recognition of the infinite as God, “the infinite and 
eternal energy from which all things proceed and to 
which all things return.” Monotheism itself has several 
distinct phases or stages of development. One of these, 
deism, we have already noticed as the crudest and most 
popular form of monotheism. Another, pantheism, tends 
to identify God with the impersonal forces of the universe. 
In our civilization, however, monotheism has tended to 
take a more social and spiritual form, known as ethical 
theism, and probably rightly, since mere “energism” satis¬ 
fies neither the emotions nor the intelligence of man. 
Under ethical theism, idealistic social values have been 
more readily given a religious sanction, that is, univer¬ 
salized or projected into the universe, than under any 
other form of religion. Thus through ethical theism, 
though it is a form of religious consciousness to which the 
masses even in Christian lands have only partially at¬ 
tained, social idealism has been stimulated as never be¬ 
fore in the history of civilization. 

Now this rough outline of the development of religion 
shows clearly enough that religion has evolved with the 
social and mental life of man; that it is a thing which 
changes with the whole cultural complex which we call 
“civilizationand that changes in religion have been 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION 55 


correlated with changes in man’s social and cultural life 
in general. Clearly enough, too, human history has been, 
from one point of view, a struggle to attain to a rational 
and truly social religion—such a valuation of all the ex¬ 
perience of life in terms of the universe as accords with 
man’s reason and yet intensifies his social values. Only 
to an absolute skeptic would the great stages in religious 
evolution appear other than as steps in social and cultural 
progress. 

It is clear also that through all of its history religion 
has been a “control” over social life, an instrument of 
social adaptation; and we are now better prepared to 
understand its function in maintaining social order and 
in aiding social progress. How has it affected these vital 
matters in the social life of humanity in the past, and 
how may it influence them in the future? Let us take 
up first its influence upon social order. 

From the earliest ages, and through all the revolutions 
of religion, its chief social function has been to support 
the “mores” of the social group in which it has been 
found. Strictly speaking, all religions are ethical in the 
sense that they support the customary morality of their 
groups. 1 The inculcation and support of ethical ideals, or 
idealistic aims, is of course a late development in re¬ 
ligion, but even the most primitive religions support cus¬ 
tom. “The religion of a savage,” says Dr. Marett, “is 
his whole custom so far as it appears sacred.” 2 The 
primitive conception of the “sacred,” as we have seen, 
was something which was forbidden, or “taboo.” But the 
thing which was sacred or “taboo” was, in reality, some 

1 Compare Ames, Psychology of Religious Experience, pp. 285-287. 

a Anthropology, p. 213. 


56 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


custom or usage which the group desired to maintain; and 
anything which was contrary to that custom was forbidden. 
Thus the concept of the sacred became attached to the 
custom, or socially sanctioned usage, itself. Primitive 
“mores” thus became hedged around with “taboos” or with 
positive religious sanctions. Whatever the group found 
to conduce to personal and social safety came to have the 
sanction of religion attached to it. Now this early con¬ 
nection between primitive morals and primitive religion 
was not accidental; it was logically and psychologically 
necessary. The very conception of a superhuman, won¬ 
der-working power in nature was largely obtained by the 
projection into nature of that psychic element in experi¬ 
ence which the social life had developed. The whole 
world of experience was thus made, so to speak, socio- 
morphic. The wonder-working powers to be feared and 
propitiated were thus inevitably associated with the ac¬ 
tivities of the group. Those activities that were success¬ 
ful, that were accompanied by good luck, were in harmony, 
manifestly, with the superhuman power; that is, they 
had mana in them. On the other hand, those activities 
which did not succeed, or were accompanied by ill luck, 
had no mana, that is, were opposed to the superhuman 
power. Thus religious sanction came naturally to attach 
itself to those modes of conduct of which the group ap¬ 
proved ; that is, to those which had been found safe and 
to conduce to group welfare. Hence social obligations 
became religious obligations even in the lowest forms of 
social life of which we have knowledge. From their very 
method of development, therefore, religious beliefs become 
early entangled with moral standards and ideals. They 
are built up from social experience and they function 
toward social ends. 

Almost any religious concept or belief will illustrate 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF KELIGION 57 

this. Let us take, for example, the concept of God. 1 
When we examine the concept of God among any people 
we find that invariably it is built up from their social ex¬ 
perience. In the earliest religions the gods are often 
zoomorphic, we have seen, because in the hunting stage 
of culture the experiences of the social life lead to a high 
valuation of the shrewdness, power, cunning, and perhaps, 
the helpfulness of the animal which is hunted. At a very 
much later date the concept of God represents particularly 
some personal trait or character which is valued by the 
group such as the power of the warrior, the wisdom of the 
judge, or the magnificence of the monarch. The idea 
stands, in other words, for the ideal of personal character 
which has come to be peculiarly appreciated by the group, 
such as the character of some ancestor or king. But the 
god is always thought of as a member of the group, and 
as in a peculiar way safeguarding its social life. The 
values found in the god-concept, thus are always derived 
from social experiences of one sort or another. As Pro¬ 
fessor Ames says, “The growth and objectification of the 
god goes hand in hand with the social experience and 
achievements of the nation.” 2 

This is well illustrated from the religious history of 
the Hebrew people. Their concept of Jehovah gradually 
expanded from that of a tribal, national god of patriarchal 
and kinglike character, who was lord of the tribal host, 
to that of a universal deity, father of all the nations of 
the earth, possessing not only the attributes of patriarch, 
but also those of a social redeemer and savior. Moreover, 
nearly all of the values which came to be attached to the 

1 This whole chapter has more or less centered on the evolution of 
the idea of God, because this idea plays such a prominent part in 
religion that it illustrates well the development and functioning of 
the religious consciousness in general. 

2 Op. cit. p. 113. 


58 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


god-concept among the Hebrews, it may he added, were 
directly derived from the social experiences of Hebrew 
family life. Jehovah as the father of his people came to 
be thought of not only as demanding obedience and service, 
but as representing a father’s love and care, and so as 
becoming the redeemer of his people. Indeed, the reason 
for the superiority of the religious conceptions of the 
Hebrews is not far to seek. It was because Hebrew social 
life, particularly Hebrew family life, was of a high type, 
presenting at its best a unity and harmony which was 
scarcely attained by any other people of antiquity. 

Other religious concepts than that of the deity illustrate 
equally well the fact that they are built up from social 
experiences and psychologically are projections of social 
values. The concept of the immortality of the soul, which 
we find more or less developed in all religions, is simply an 
indefinite extension of personal and social values. When 
we find a separation in the life after death of the souls 
of good and evil men, heaven, or the abode of the righteous, 
is pictured as an ideal society, such an ideal of course 
as the social life of the people of the time permits. Fin¬ 
ally, the concepts of personal responsibility and of indi¬ 
vidual freedom in working out one’s own destiny which 
we find so generally associated with higher religions are 
clearly social values. Without the inculcation to some 
extent of the doctrines of personal freedom and respon¬ 
sibility, orderly social groups can scarcely exist. These 
illustrations suffice to show that among every people re¬ 
ligion is identified with the most intimate and vital phases 
of the social life; that the ideal values of each type of 
social development tend always to religious expressiond 

But why should social values express themselves re- 

1 Ames, Psychology of Religious Experience , p. 283. 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF KELIGION 59 


ligiously, it may be asked ? Is not the fact that they are 
social values, built up from real experiences, sufficient 
sanction for them, without attaching to them theological 
or mythological notions? This latter form of the ques¬ 
tion indicates, of course, a misunderstanding; for a re¬ 
ligious sanction given to social values, does not necessarily 
imply the attachment to them of definite theological no¬ 
tions—it only implies that they are made universal, and, 
as it were, absolute. We have, accordingly, already an¬ 
swered the question why social values need the sanction 
of religion. It is because religion universalizes them and 
presents them to the mind of the individual as absolute 
values. Just as we cannot and do not act upon intellectual 
concepts without universalizing them, so the most funda¬ 
mental social values must be universalized and made abso¬ 
lute, as it were, for the mind of the group before they will 
be acted upon with that unanimity which social order 
and solidarity demand. Of course it does not matter if 
minor social values are not thus universalized, because 
variations in minor details of conduct are usually of no 
great importance to group life. But the fundamental, 
intimate, vital values of the social life must be brought 
to individual consciousness in the intensest way, that is, 
they must be given religious expression, and so univer¬ 
salized, if the group is to preserve its harmony, efficiency, 
and capacity to survive as a group. 

To put the matter negatively, a religionless world would 
be one in which there were no absolute values. Values 
would thus tend to become individualized and be at the 
whim and the caprice of the individual. But human 
societies cannot exist upon such a basis of the absolute 
individualization of values. Certain values the group 
must have generally accepted to preserve its integrity at 
all. Such, for example, are the values connected with life, 


60 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


with endurance and suffering, with loyalty to group in¬ 
terests, with good will among the members of the group, 
with mutual service, and with mutual sacrifice for the 
sake of mutual aid. Men everywhere, have to confront 
their world with hope and courage, and faith, on the one 
hand, and with loyalty, good will, and devotion to their 
fellows, upon the other hand, if human life is to he lived 
together successfully. Now religion by universalizing 
these values gives a fuller meaning to life, encourages 
hope, strengthens endurance and suffering, intensifies 
loyalty to the ideals of the group, prevents pessimism, 
despair, and degeneracy. Thus it increases stability of 
character in the individual which, in turn, makes for 
harmonious as well as stable relations among individuals. 
A religionless social world would be a social world of un¬ 
certainties, destitute of enthusiasm, and of vision, reduced 
to the dead level of individual expediency. It would be 
a social world in which neither harmony nor good will 
could long prevail. 1 

This is not to say, of course, that morality of a high 
type cannot exist, in civilized human society, in non-re¬ 
ligious individuals. That is possible, because morality 
is so largely a thing of habit and of custom; a non-religious 
individual living in a society which universalizes its social 
values might exemplify the moral ideals of his group in 
the fullest degree simply through customary imitation 
and the power of personal habit. 2 3 But to admit the pos¬ 
sibility of such highly moral individuals who are genuinely 


1 Following another line of reasoning, Professor Conklin in The 
Direction of Human Evolution reaches substantially the same con¬ 

clusion, p. 168: “We shall never outgrow our need of religion, as 
we shall never outgrow our need of government and science.” 

3 Ames, however, contends (op. cit. p. 359 f.) even that genuinely 
non-religious persons are always lacking in the sense of ideal values 
which constitutes the social conscience. 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION 61 


non-religious in a social life pervaded by high ethical 
standards is no proof that we can have whole civilizations 
highly moral and at the same time genuinely non-re¬ 
ligious. A religionless civilization presents an entirely 
different problem from a religionless individual. Such 
a civilization has never existed in the world and the 
reason should now be obvious why it cannot exist. 

Let us look a little more intimately, however, at the 
nature of human civilization and why it presupposes re¬ 
ligion for its development. The most careful studies 
of anthropologists and sociologists have shown that every 
civilization develops about certain “pattern ideas’’ or 
dominant social values. This is true even of the material 
aspects of life so far as they become rationalized and cul¬ 
tural. Thus in the making of stone implements we find 
primitive man following out a certain pattern and perfect¬ 
ing it until he comes to the point where he develops an¬ 
other pattern and perfects that, and so on. Thus civilized 
human society has been built up very much like the great 
mechanical inventions of the present time, say, for exam¬ 
ple, the steam engine. Without some “pattern ideas” in 
the mind to follow, manifestly the steam engine could not 
have been perfected. So, too, social organization and re¬ 
lationships have largely developed in the same way, upon 
the basis, of course, of the instinctive ends and needs of 
men. 

Thus, even in the most primitive times men apparently 
reflected upon their habits or ways of living with one 
another and approved of some and disapproved of others. 
Those usages or habits which were approved of and con¬ 
nected with the idea of the welfare of the group became 
the “mores,” or customs, of the group. Thus certain 
pattern ideas, as regards social relationships, certain social 


62 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


values, became connected with the social life of the group. 
These were gradually perfected and systematized so that 
out of them social institutions arose. But the “mores,” 
as we have seen, were imbedded in religious feelings and 
beliefs, that is, they became absolute social values, with a 
superhuman sanction attached to them. Without such 
a sanction these pattern ideas and social values, at least 
in so far as they concerned a supersensible world, would 
never have been copied by generation after generation. 
The “mores” would have broken down and social discon¬ 
tinuity would have resulted. Thus the social significance 
of religion has been, in the past, in the support which it 
has given, in all stages of human culture, to custom, moral 
standards, and moral ideals. It is easy enough to say 
theoretically that morality is something separate and dis¬ 
tinct from religion, but practically, they have always 
gone hand in hand. 

But it may be asked if science cannot take the place 
of religion in giving a “relatively absolute” or universal 
character to the social values or “pattern ideas” which we 
must follow for the development of our culture. It has 
done so in the material realm, where now we ask no 
further test of the value of an ideal than its practical 
utility. Why can it not do so in the social realm ? The 
reply is that the higher social values have a different 
character from these material values. They cannot be 
tested even by the experience of a single generation to say 
nothing of the experience of a single individual. The 
social sciences, therefore, cannot furnish the same test to 
the individual mind of their values as the physical sciences. 
Take the value of “good will,” for example. It is evident 
that the individual in his experience may find it of very 
limited validity. Again, if we take such a value as 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION 63 

“self-sacrifice,” even to the point of death, for the sake of 
one’s country, or of humanity, it is evident that the indi¬ 
vidual can find no such validity in such an action as he 
would in adapting means to ends in physical nature. The 
social world is, if we may be allowed to use the expression, 
a world of transcendental 1 values, a world of supersensi¬ 
ble things and relations. Science alone, accordingly, can 
never give to social values, in the mind of the individual, 
that universal and absolute character which they need to 
possess; or rather, it can do so only in proportion as it 
transforms itself, as Comte said, into religion. It is thus 
that social science instead of becoming a substitute for, 
and displacing religion, leads to the perception of its 
value; for it finds no other way of making absolute and 
unquestioned the fundamental values of our social life 
than through religion. 

Civilization, however, as we have seen, must be ac¬ 
quired by each generation. Its values have to be learned 
by each individual as he comes on to the stage of life. 
From the nature of these values, as we have just seen, 
they cannot be adequately tested by the experience of the 
individual. They must rather be accepted by him as 
coming from a source whose validity transcends even that 
of his own experience; that is, they must be taken up by 
him from “the social mind,” the store of ideas and values 
by which men have learned to regulate their conduct. But 
to learn such values thoroughly and to make them more 
powerful to regulate conduct than the sensuous experi¬ 
ences of life means that such moral values must have 
a religious sanction attached to them or else they will fail 
effectively to control conduct. Thus the “mores” of our 
age, not less than of previous ages, need the support of 

1 We use the word to mean “transcending the experience of the 
individual.” 


64 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


religion. Idealistic social morality without any religious 
sanction, so far as social science can see, is an impossible 
dream; and the more complex our social life becomes, de¬ 
manding more complex and difficult adjustments on the 
part of the individual, the more impossible a high social 
morality without a correspondingly high social religion 
becomes. The death of religion would accordingly mean 
the death of all higher civilization. 

The social need and the social power of religion are now 
manifest. Let us, however, reiterate what we have al¬ 
ready said about the possibility of religion becoming a 
reactionary rather than a progressive force, a support for 
the evil in the social life rather than for the good. The 
religious problem is not simply the problem of the main¬ 
tenance of religion in human lfe. For reasons, which 
we have already seen, probably there is no such problem 
as that; for if we do not have a rational and ethical re¬ 
ligion, the mind of man is such, we have seen, that we 
are bound to have irrational and unethical religion—if not 
a religion of social progress, then a religion of social re¬ 
trogression and barbarism. Religion may become at¬ 
tached to any of the mores of society, to any human 
institution, to any social order, no matter how barbarous 
it may be; and when religious sanction has become attached 
to any social value it is more difficult to change that value. 
Civilization might die from a barbarous or reactionary 
religion as well as from lack of religion. Hence the 
real religious problem of our society is to secure the gen¬ 
eral acceptance of a religion adapted to the requirements 
of continuous progress toward an ideal society, consisting 
of all humanity. 

In part, the backward tendency of religion, when it 
manifests itself, comes from its necessary function as a 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION 65 


conservator of social values. It is a means, as we have 
seen, of conserving customs and habits which have been 
found to be safe by the group, or which are believed to 
conduce to group welfare. It surrounds itself, accord¬ 
ingly, with prohibitions and “taboos” of actions of which 
the group, or its dominant class, disapproves. It lends 
itself easily, therefore, to maintaining a given social 
order longer than that order is necessary or even after it 
has become a stumbling block to progress. For the same 
reason religion is easily exploited by a dominant class 
in their own interests. It is in this way that religion 
has often become an impediment to progress and an instru¬ 
ment of class oppression. It is thus, also, that it has 
raised up enemies for itself who see nothing in it hut 
its negative and conservative side. Writers of strong anti- 
religious bias emphasize this negative and conservative 
aspect of religion, hut it is not infrequently emphasized 
overmuch by the friends of religion. 

Now, however important the socially conservative nature 
of religion may be; whether it be, as one writer declares, 
a reaction against social degeneracy; or as another writer 
says, “the force of social gravitation that holds the social 
world in its orbit,” it is a mistake to think of religion 
mainly as negative and conservative in our social life. 
In a static society, which emphasizes prohibitions and the 
conservation of mere habit, religion will also, of course, 
emphasize the same things; but there is no necessity that 
it should do this. In a progressive society religion can as 
easily attach its sanctions to conduct and to ideals which 
are progressive as to those which are static. In other 
words, religion can as easily attach its sanctions to social 
ideals beyond the existing order of things as to the exist¬ 
ing order. Such an idealistic religion will, however, 


66 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


have the disadvantage of appealing mainly to the progres¬ 
sive and idealizing tendencies of human nature rather 
than to its conservative and reactionary tendencies. A 
socially progressive religion, to find wide following and 
acceptance, presupposes a high development of intelligence 
in the mass of individuals. This is doubtless the reason 
why progressive religions are exceedingly rare in human 
history, taking it as a whole, and have appeared only in 
the later stages of cultural evolution. 

Nevertheless there is an intimate connection between 
social idealism and the higher religions. These religions 
have, for the most part, gotten their ideals from the 
family life; and sociology shows that social and moral 
ideals in general have come from the primary forms of 
association, such as the family. 1 Social idealism is an 
attempt to realize in the wider social life (that is, the 
life of classes, nations and races) these primary ideals 
which are gotten from primary groups; the higher ethical 
religions got their ideals from the same source and have 
the same aim. They are, therefore, hut manifestations 
of social idealism imbedded in religious feeling and ac¬ 
companied by more or less formal religious sanctions . 

In the higher stages of cultural revolution, then, re¬ 
ligion comes to reinforce and sanction social progress. 
Setting its seal of approval upon an ideal social life not 
yet realized, it gives to such a “pattern idea” a force and 
power which it could get in no other way. Religion thus 
becomes a powerful social dynamic and an instrument 
of progressive social order. It sets up a “utopia” which 
gives a goal and a meaning for the whole social life. If 
this utopia is in nationalistic terms it of course powerfully 
reinforces the national spirit. If, on the other hand, the 

1 See Chapter VII. 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION 67 


utopia is in humanitarian terms it reinforces the humani¬ 
tarian trend of civilization. 1 Thus the goal sanctioned 
by religion may become a powerful social dynamic, trans¬ 
forming in time the whole social life. 

It is a matter of supreme importance, therefore, in our 
social life to see that religion sanctions right social ends. 
It is only a religion which stimulates a humanity-wide 
altruism in the individual which is adequate as a founda¬ 
tion for social progress. Through humanitarian religion, 
a religion which stimulates such a humanity-wide altruism, 
quite evidently class, tribal and national ethics can he 
transcended and replaced by humanitarian ethics. 

It may he said, of course, that humanitarian ethics 
does not need humanitarian religion, but all human ex¬ 
perience opposes such a conclusion, and we have seen 
reasons why this must be so. Indeed, humanitarian ethics 
demands more in the way of self-sacrifice from the indi¬ 
vidual than class, tribal, or national ethics. It makes, 
in other words, the least appeal of any system of morality 
to the natural egoism of the individual, because it con¬ 
cerns the largest possible human group, having to do with 
the welfare of many individuals of whose existence the 
average individual knows nothing directly through experi¬ 
ence, and concerning whose welfare he can have tangible 
ideas only through the exercise of the liveliest imagination. 
If humanitarian ethics is to succeed in overcoming the 
conflicts between classes. Tuitions, and races, which are 
now tearing asunder our world, it must have the support 
of a religion of humanity . 2 

1 By humanitarianism, we mean, following Hobhouse (Morals in 
Evolution, Vol. II, p. 249), the doctrine which “makes the furtherance 
of the collective life of humanity the supreme object of endeavor.” 
Hence similar meaning attaches to the phrases humanitarian re¬ 
ligion, humanitarian ethics, humanitarian civilization, etc. 

3 It is just because religion supports, develops and completes ethics 
that developed religion, as Hobhouse says (Morals in Evolution, Vol. 


G8 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


Many religions have, of course, approached the humani¬ 
tarian viewpoint or developed humanitarian principles 
as incidental to their main teachings. Thus the great 
purpose of Buddhism is undoubtedly to put an end to 
human sorrow and suffering. To this end it not only 
counsels the avoidance of inflicting all pain or suffering 
upon living creatures, and pity, gentleness, and charity in 
all human relations, hut also the cessation of all striving 
and desire on the part of the individual in order that the 
incidental suffering may be escaped. Buddhism is, in 
brief, a doctrine not only of selflessness, but of quietism. 
At first glance it would seem to he supremely humani¬ 
tarian, and it has often been thus represented. But its 
humanitarianism is negative rather than positive. Its 
negative attitude toward life prevents it from developing 
a positive doctrine of the development of humanity. It 
seeks escape from life and its evils rather than the devel¬ 
opment of life through mastery over its conditions. Pas¬ 
sivity rather than activity is its goal. Its humanitarian¬ 
ism resembles closely the spurious humanitarianism of the 
present day which regards all suffering as evil. The final 
judgment of science concerning Buddhism, despite its 
noble qualities, can only be that it is fundamentally non¬ 
social in its ideals and hence that it fails to furnish the 
religious values and ideals needed for a progressive civili¬ 
zation. 

Mohammedanism, also, in some of its later develop¬ 
ments, especially in Bahaism, 1 has shown a strong humani¬ 
tarian trend. But Mohammedanism, so far as it has 
raised itself above Semitic paganism, is based on Judaism 

II, p. 255), has its firmest root in ethics, and that “Ethics becomes 
the test to which religion must submit.” (Ibid., p. 252.) 

1 Bahaism in its origin was an offshoot of Mohammedanism, though 
many Bahaists in America regard themselves as Christians. See 
article, “Bab, Babism,” in Hastings’ Encyclopedia. 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION 69 


and Christianity. It was the religion of the later Hebrew 
prophets, which furnished the enduring base upon which 
has been built whatever is worthy in Christianity, Moham¬ 
medanism, and later Judaism. In the teachings of these 
men are found the first faint beginnings of that positive 
humanitarian religion and ethics which has become the 
hope of the world. It was not until Christianity burst the 
shell of Jewish nationalism, however, and became an 
international religion, that the movement to supplant the 
tribal and predatory traditions of the ancient world by a 
tradition of universal peace, good will, mutual aid, and 
brotherhood among men may be said to have been fairly 
launched. 

If what has been said in the preceding paragraph is 
correct, it is evident that the main stream of religious 
evolution must be sought in ancient Judaism and Christi¬ 
anity. That this is so, and the scientific reasons for it, 
we shall endeavor to set forth in the next chapter. For 
to understand the full social significance of religon, we 
must understand the social meaning of the Christian 
movement in particular. 


CHAPTER III 


THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

The second thing to be considered in the reconstruc¬ 
tion of religion is the social significance of Christianity, 
in the sense of the religion of Jesus. We must strive to 
gain an insight into its place and meaning in social evo¬ 
lution. Ho historical movement has been more misunder¬ 
stood, alike by friend and foe, than Christianity. This 
is largely because of the lack of sociological and anthro¬ 
pological perspective and knowledge. Only the densest 
sociological ignorance would suppose that the Christian 
movement is an accident in human history. 1 On the con¬ 
trary, like its political counterpart (the movement toward 
democracy), it is of the very essence of later social and 
cultural evolution. It is an integral part of the historical 
process, an essential factor in social evolution. To under¬ 
stand what it means we must try to get a view of the move¬ 
ment of human history as a whole, as it is pictured to us 
by modern science. 

Anthropologists tell us that the whole culture history 
of man may bo roughly divided into three stages—sav- 

1 Says Professor Case, in his valuable work on The Evolution of 
Early Christianity (p. 25) : “Christianity can be ultimately and com¬ 
prehensively conceived only in the developmental sense, as the product 
of actual persons working out their religious problems in immediate 
contact with their several worlds of reality,” 

TO 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTIANITY 71 


agery, barbarism, and civilization. 1 Savagery, in which 
man is a mere child of nature, living off of the wild 
fruits of the earth and the animals that he can kill and 
eat, making no attempt to control his own destiny, lasted 
for the race at least one hundred thousand years, archae¬ 
ological evidence shows, while some belated human groups 
still survive in that state. Barbarism, a traditional stage, 
in which man begins to cultivate the soil and raise domestic 
animals, but soon turns his attention to preying upon his 
fellowmen as an easier method of gaining a livelihood than 
the mastering of nature, began in Europe about eight or 
ten thousand years ago with the coming of neolithic man. 
Militancy and predatoriness were the chief social traits 

1 This narrower use of the term “civilization” to designate a par¬ 
ticular stage of culture, namely, beginning with the keeping of 
historic records, as it is common both in ordinary and scientific 
language, should not confuse the reader. See definition of culture 
and civilization in the broad sense on p. 12. Some authorities would 
designate that part of civilization which begins with universal literacy 
or education as the “stage of enlightenment.” But there seems no 
good reason why it should not be regarded as a phase of civilization. 
The author, therefore, has preferred to keep the term “civilization” 
for the entire stage of cultural evolution which is characterized by 
control over the social tradition, dividing it into “semi-civilization” 
(beginning with the invention of writing) and “true or developed 
civilization” (beginning with universal education). The reader needs 
hardly to be warned that stages of culture are not sharply defined, 
that they overlap, and vary greatly in the different peoples. 

A different classification of the stages of human culture (or mental 
and social development) is proposed by Edward Carpenter in his 
Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning: namely, the 
stages (1) of Simple Consciousness, when man’s consciousness is still 
animal-like; (2) of Self-Consciousness, which began in the barbarism 
of Neolithic times, and in which man consciously makes self the 
center of interest, and (3) of Universal Consciousness, a stage just 
beginning, in which self will no longer be the center, but humanity 
and the universe. This classification, while suggestive, seems to be 
based upon the fallacy of regarding “self-consciousness” as synony¬ 
mous with self-interest or selfishness. Man will probably grow mere 
self-conscious, but also more “social” or “altruistic.” In any case, 
true Christianity (despite what Carpenter says to the contrary) 
might be regarded as marking the beginning of the third stage, 
“Universal Consciousness.” 


72 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


of barbarism, and these in turn grew out of a narrow 
“group morality” and a limited “consciousness of kind.” 
Civilization, in the strict sense, only began with the keep¬ 
ing of historic records, with man’s coming to social self- 
consciousness, and with his beginning of the control and 
conquest of the mental or spiritual element in his life. 
This stage of human history is, then, a thing of yester¬ 
day—only in its beginnings, not more than four or five 
thousand years old for any people, and scarcely two thou¬ 
sand years old for most Europeans. We began to out¬ 
grow barbarism, in other words, but yesterday, and it 
should not be surprising that many of the traditions of 
barbarism still survive among us. Complete civilization 
will arrive with the full socialization of man. 

To the sociological imagination this development of 
human culture presents itself as a parabola, with human 
experience as the chief element at its focus. The lower 
part of the curve may be taken as representing the not 
less than one hundred thousand years of savagery, of 
brute-like ignorance and subjection to the blind forces of 
nature, through which the race has passed. The upper 
part of the curve may be taken as the one hundred thou¬ 
sand years or more of civilization, of mastery over phy¬ 
sical nature, and human nature, which, we may hope, 
lies ahead of our race. The remaining or vertical part 
of the curve will then represent that transitional stage of 
barbarism through which our race has passed on its way 
from animality to spirituality, from ignorance to knowl¬ 
edge, from the darkness of savagery to the light of civili¬ 
zation. We might represent this graphically by the fol¬ 
lowing diagram: 1 

1 This diagram, like all graphical representations in the social 
sciences, must not, of course, be taken too seriously. It is only a 
rough, convenient me? °»f representing an idea. If the curve were 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTIANITY 73 

Evidently we are now just entering upon the upper 
part of the curve, with the real work and higher achieve¬ 
ments of true civilization still lying all ahead of us. 



The typical institutions of barbarism, or predatory cul¬ 
ture, still survive, or but lately existed among us. Yes¬ 
terday we had slavery, and even to-day we are only trying 


drawn accurately it would be very irregular, as human history pro¬ 
ceeds by the “trial and error method,” a succession of “ups” and 
“downs,” advances and regressions, witn progress resulting as a 
whole, hitherto. An entirely different graph from the parabola might, 
of course, be used to represent the general movement. Curiously 
enough, the parabola was selected by Henry Adams (The Degradation 
of the Democratic Dogma, p. 302) to illustrate pessimistic conclusions 
which were based upon his attempt to trace physical laws in social 
movements. No such analogy with the physical is here implied. On 
the contrary, human history, as a process of learning through “trial 
and error,” is essentially a psychological process. See my Intro, 
duction to Social Psychology. 





U THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


to rid ourselves of polygamy, autocracy, militarism, class 
exploitation, and the debaucheries of barbarous self-indul¬ 
gence. We are still slowly and painfully learning the 
rudiments of true civilization. 

Let us recall again the method of cultural evolution 
and the importance of a pattern ideas,” or “ideals,” in the 
social life, this time not in the way of maintaining social 
order, but rather in furthering social progress. The tran¬ 
sition from lower to higher stages of civilization, anthro¬ 
pologists tell us, is intermediated by the formation of “pat¬ 
tern ideas,” or “ideals.” 1 By the principle of anticipation 
these ideas are often formed far in advance of the com¬ 
plete birth of the new civilization. The human mind 
sees the need or the advantage, sets up an “ideal,” a “pat¬ 
tern” of the thing to be realized, and then by various 
methods works towards its goal. Thus long before men 
invented the flying machine they formed the idea of the 
flying machine. Then they watched the flight of birds 
and other animals and studied the properties of physical 
nature until they found methods of realizing their idea 
or ideal of the flying machine. Thousands of such illus¬ 
trations might be given. All of the important things in 
human culture, then, exist first as “pattern ideas” in the 
minds of men before they are realized in actual life; and 
they exist, as a rule, long before they are realized. 

How this principle applies to the great changes in re¬ 
ligion and morals, and so in civilization itself, not less 
than in the realm of mechanical invention. Such 
changes come through the starting of new pattern ideas 
or standards in the minds of men. These are reflected 
upon by the popular mind, and if accepted and approved 

1 See an article by the author on “Theories of Cultural Evolution” 
in Amerioan Journal of Sociology, May, 1918, Vol. XXIII, pp. 779-800. 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTIANITY 75 

they become the “mores,” the all-powerful standards, of 
a new culture. But the pattern ideas or standards of a 
new culture do not arise gradually out of those of the 
old culture or mix, in general, harmoniously with them. 
They arise suddenly as new inventions, new perceptions 
on the part of social leaders, and cultural evolution pro¬ 
ceeds by one type entirely supplanting another type. 
Thus the standards of the predatory type of culture known 
as barbarism must be completely supplanted by entirely 
different standards before we can have true civilization. 
Nevertheless, the ideals and standards of an older type of 
culture may persist for an indefinite time alongside of 
those of a new, while the new type is emerging. Thus 
arise conflicts between the old and the new; and this ex¬ 
plains in large measure the great moral conflicts in our 
human world. They are conflicts between old and new 
cultural patterns. As the ideas and standards of pre¬ 
datory culture were thousands of years dominant in our 
traditions, we must expect them to manifest themselves 
at times in their old power in the earlier stages of a non- 
predatory civilization. 

Since the patterns of a new culture concern human re¬ 
lations they demand more than mere intellectual assent. 
They must become social values with compelling social 
sanctions. They need accordingly a decided emotional 
setting in order to overcome the native egoism of the in¬ 
dividual, since the break with old habits and the entering 
upon a new and higher form of social organization entails 
sacrifices in many cases. This emotional setting the new 
cultural patterns get through the sanction of religion, in 
accordance with the principles which we have discussed 
in the preceding chapter. Hence a revolutionary change 
in human culture, if it is a social advance, is always pre¬ 
ceded or accompanied by a religious reformation or re- 


76 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


vival. The social significance of religious reformations, 
with their revival of intense religious emotions, is that 
they smooth the way for the acceptance of new cultural 
patterns or social ideals. Thus the Protestant Reforma¬ 
tion prepared the way for the individual freedom of the 
modern world. The Methodist movement among English- 
speaking peoples again undoubtedly was a forerunner of 
nineteenth century democracy in Britain and America. 
But with those greater revolutions in culture which con¬ 
cern the most fundamental patterns and ideals of social 
life, a much greater religious movement is needed, more 
extended in time and more revolutionary in character. 
Religion functions, as we have seen, to meet the crises of 
life, and no crisis in social evolution exceeds that of the 
transition from one type of culture to another. World 
religions arise to mediate these transitions. 1 The adapta¬ 
tion of human society to a universal non-predatory type 
of culture would necessarily require a new religion of 
international, humanitarian character to broaden man’s 
consciousness of kind. 


What Christianity is, from an anthropological and 
sociological point of view, should now be evident. Chris¬ 
tianity is a new set of “pattern ideas,” marking the dawn 
of a new type of culture, a culture with a non-predatory 
morality on a humanitarian basis. It is an effort to 


1 The historical conditions surrounding the origin of new world 
religions are not fully known, but in every case they seem to be 
those of great cultural change. This was especially true of Chris¬ 
tianity. Those who are familiar with the social conditions of the 
early first century in Judea and in the Greco-Roman world generally 
tell us that there was a peculiar “ripeness” in these conditions for 
just such a social and cultural change as early Christianity at¬ 
tempted. A part of the conditions under which Christianity originated 
are vividly described by Simkhovitch in his Toward 'the Under¬ 
standing of Jesus. 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTIANITY 77 


transcend predatory individual, class, tribal, and national 
ethics and to replace these with a universalized, social, in¬ 
ternational, humanitarian ethics. The beginnings of this 
movement are, of course, to be found in the many pre¬ 
cursors of Jesus, and especially in the later Jewish 
prophets. But in the life and teachings of Jesus these 
ideas first came to effective expression. He initiated the 
revolution in religious and moral ideas for which the 
whole of human history had been preparing. 

Only misunderstanding of human history and of the 
nature of religion could lead to the supposition that the 
Christian movement marks merely a stage in the evolu¬ 
tion of man’s theological beliefs. 1 Christianity apparently 
started as a protest against Jewish formalism and par¬ 
ticularism. But as such a protest, it had to develop the 
spiritual and universal side of Judaism, already more or 
less explicit in the teachings of its later prophets. In 
Jesus we find the supreme development of this prophetic 
Judaism with its trend toward ethical and religious uni- 
versalism. Premising the supreme value of human per¬ 
sonality, his clear teaching was that the only possible way 
to serve God is through the service of men, no matter what 
their condition, occupation, or nationality might be. Thus 
he revolutionized both religion and ethics in humanizing 
both . The humanitarian impulse of the time, accord¬ 
ingly, attached itself to Christianity, which became an 
idealistic social movement in the Greco-Roman world to 
supplant its predatory traditions by new ideals of peace, 

1 Early Christianity, Case tells us (op. cit. Chapter I), cannot be 
conceived primarily as “an abstract quantity of doctrine, ethics, or 
ritual.” Rather it was “a new religious awakening,” which had its 
origin in “an outburst of spiritual energy on the part of Jesus and 
his followers, striving after new and richer attainments under the 
stimuli of a new and more suggestive environment.” (p. 28.) 


78 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


good will, mutual aid, and brotherhood among men. 1 

The distinctive note of Christianity was “redemption” 
—not simply of the individual but of the world. For it 
looked to the establishment of a social order in which the 
divine will should be realized—a kingdom of God—an 
order which should make of humanity one large family 
with peace, justice, and good will among all its members. 
But this new social order was to be established not by 

1 In an article in the American Journal of Theology, January, 1918, 
on “Primitive Christianity an Idealistic Social Movement,” Prof. 
C. W. Votaw, of the University of Chicago, summarizes the socially 
idealistic aspects of primitive Christianity as follows: 

1. Its comprehensive and supreme principle was love of man 
toward man—brotherliness in feeling, action, and thought. 

2. It inculcated the sacrifice of self for the good of others. 

3. It made the common welfare the chief aim of life. 

4. It sought to establish consideration and justice in the social 
relations of men. 

5. It aimed to diminish the valuation and to check the pursuit of 
material things. 

6. It sought to control and suppress sex immorality. 

7. It elevated the marriage ideal and practice. 

8. It forbade envy and strife, fraud and theft, drunkenness and 
reveling. 

9. It condemned pride, ostentation, and hypocrisy. 

10. It censured the self-complacency, arrogance, and selfishness of 
the better class. 

11. It placed the social duties above the ritual duties, right con¬ 
duct and character above worship and ordinance. 

12. It interpreted the will of God in the direction of reasonable 
living. 

13. It made the individual free, autonomous, responsible. 

14. It rebuked legalism in law and in social administration. 

15. It sought to prevent the domination of the weak by the strong. 

16. It opposed the use of force to accomplish social ends. 

17. It undertook to replace the law and practice of retribution, 
i. e., revenge, retaliation, by the principle of returning good for evil 
and overcoming evil with good. 

18. It created so high and free a conception of the right social 
relations as to disafifect the Christians toward the Roman Government. 

19. It developed local groups of persons throughout the Empire 
bound together religiously and socially in close fellowship. 

20. It unified Orientals and Occidentals in a real brotherhood 
surmounting the barriers of race antipathy and national alignment. 

21. It brought together on a common plane the rich and the poor. 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTIANITY 79 


force or by authority, but by a new life within the indi¬ 
vidual soul—a life redeemed from sin and in harmony 
with the divine will. Christianity 1 was thus not so much 
a mere “reform” movement in the external social order 
as a movement directed at a “revolution in culture,” a 
complete change in the “mores.” From the first it was so 
recognized and fought by the champions and defenders of 
the older order in which it originated. 3 

the educated and the ignorant, the prominent and the obscure, the 
master and the slave. 

22. It welded new social bonds, detaching people from previous 
groups and associations and uniting them on a higher basis. 

23. It founded a solid, permanent social organization within the 
Roman Empire that was to survive the latter’s decline and fall. 

24. It made life idealistic, hopeful, joyful and courageous. 

25. It assured men of eternal welfare and a perfect social order 
in an imminent new age. 

1 The use of “Christianity” at times as a convenient term for the 
Christian movement—the movement to establish the religion of Jesus 
—will, it is hoped, cause nd confusion to the reader, as the context 
will indicate the meaning. 

3 With penetrating clearness a scientific educationist has thus 
recently characterized the primitive Christian movement: “The 
Christian movement in its primitive aspects represents a distinct 
resurgence of life from its natural depths and sources, whatever those 
sources may be. It is of the nature of a genuine impulse—life, energy, 
feeling, emotion, purpose welling up from within, out of the indi¬ 
vidual, out of man, out of the universe, overflowing the conventional 
channels of life and daring to live in ways that are not permitted 
by a machine-made age or civilization. ... It is the denial of the 
finality of a fixed and mechanical social order. It is the hope of a 
social order based on the inner and spiritual life and needs of society, 
an order in which the individual may find his own personal freedom 
as a member of a social fellowship. It gives the direct challenge to 
all forms of intellectualisms, practicalisms, legalisms, literalisms, and 
militarisms. Plato had said, ‘The world is made of ideas’; Jesus 
said, ‘Build your world out of love and service and sympathy/ 
Roman militarism had said, ‘Buttress your liberties with forts, 
arsenals, and legions of soldiers’; Jesus said, ‘The truth alone can 
make you free/ The Scribes and Pharisees had said, ‘Cursed is the 
man that knows not the law’; Jesus said, ‘Love is the fulfillment of 
all law/ In place of the philosopher, the moralist, or the soldier, 
Jesus sets up a little child and says, ‘Of such is the real social order 
of the future to be made/ In all these things the founder of this 
movement seems to be saying: ‘Man is a part of the creative energy 
of the universe; he shall create his own moral order, his own spiritual 


80 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

But why did such a movement originate in Judea? 
Why did it spring up within the confines of Judaism? 
Doubtless somewhat must be attributed to the fact that in 
Judea the cultures of the Occident and the Orient met, 
and that there was the point where new cultural ideals, 
or “patterns” embodying the best in both, could be most 
easily developed. The sociological principle of the “cross¬ 
fertilization of cultures” comes in here. Social develop¬ 
ments in the Greco-Roman world, especially Stoicism and 
increasing cosmopolitan practices, had done much to pre¬ 
pare the way for humanitarian ideas and ideals in religion 
and ethics. At the same time similar movements were 
starting in the Orient. That these should have come to 
focus in Judea is wdiat we should scientifically expect 
when we clearly understand the nature of Judaism. 1 

universe in which to live.’ . . . All the way through the teaching 
of primitive Christianity the implication is plain that there is quite 
as much need of the salvation of institutions as of the salvation 
of individuals.”—Joseph K. Hart in Democracy in Education, 
pp. 121-124. 

Thus Dr. Hart finds an implication of that “social statesmanship” 
in early Christianity which some have denied as existing there. In 
later chapters he explains fully how in the succeeding centuries 
Christianity was socially and politically “sterilized.” 

It will be noted that both Votaw, a student of the New Testament, 
and Hart, a student of social and cultural conditions, agree with the 
writer that the early Christian movement aimed at a “revolution in 
culture,” though this has often been denied by theologians. This is 
also the view of Simkliovitch. 

For discussion of the social conception of the kingdom of God, see 
page 176 in Chapter VI. 

1 The amount of Greek and Hindu (or other Oriental) influences 
shown in Jesus’s teachings has often been debated. It is sufficient 
for our purposes, perhaps, to note that while Jesus lived at a “cross¬ 
roads” of culture which was open to world-wide influences, yet his 
main teachings were undoubtedly a clear development of those of the 
later Jewish prophets. It will be well to remember also that the 
Jews themselves had lived for centuries at this cross-roads of culture; 
that they had had much contact with other peoples. Through fully 
one thousand years of Semitic civilization (Jerusalem already at 
1500 B. C., archaeology shows, was an important military stronghold 
and commercial center) they had accumulated much experience and 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTIANITY 81 


For the deeper reason for the development of Chris¬ 
tianity in Judea was the nature of ancient Judaism. Un¬ 
like many ancient religions it had not wandered off, so to 
speak, into religious by-paths, but had kept close to the 
main line of religious evolution as the development and 
spiritualization of social ideals and values. Psycho¬ 
logically Judaism was an idealization and projection of 
the values connected with the family life. All the re¬ 
ligious and ethical concepts of Judaism were based upon 
the family. All of the phraseology of the later prophets 
especially was borrowed from the domestic and social life. 
In other words, the ancient Jews had kept a relatively 
unspoiled family life as the center of their social life, 
and from the fraternity and idealism of this “primary 
group” had derived their religious and ethical concepts 
and ideals. Now sociology shows that the original source 
of social idealism is in the social experiences in the “pri¬ 
mary groups,” especially the family and the neighbor¬ 
hood. 1 All human history is in one sense a struggle to 
take the fraternity and democracy realized in these groups, 
when at their best, and make them humanity-wide. Thus 
Judaism in its development represented the main trend 
of religious and social evolution, and it only needed to 
break the shell of nationalistic particularism, as we have 
said, to become a universal and humanitarian religion. 

It was the work of Jesus to broaden thus the religious 
tradition and to point it to its final goal. Whatever view 
one may take of his personality, all must admit that the 
Christian movement received its initial form and impulse 

were able to profit from the mistakes of themselves and other peoples 
in religious matters, as their prophets insist. All of this fitted them 
to be the chief bearers and refiners of the religious tradition in the 
ancient world. 

1 See Cooley, Social Organization, Chanters III and IV. 


82 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


from him. 1 It was his creative personality which finally 
focused all the idealistic trends in the religious and moral 
life of the time, and brought them to the white heat of 
a new religion. This again accords with scientific socio¬ 
logical principles; for sociology has shown that—the 
creative influence of personality is necessary in all human 
achievement, and that all human progress is achievement. 2 
Masterful personal leadership is a necessary element, 
therefore, in every great social movement toward a higher 
plane of civilization; and the personality of Jesus fur¬ 
nished, and has continued to furnish, such leadership for 
the religious and moral revolution which Christianity seeks 
to effect. Jesus was not an accident in human history, 
nor is the recognition of his continued leadership of the 
Christian movement an accident. 

We must not look at early Christianity, however, as 
anything more than a beginning. It has been wrongly 
regarded by most Christians as marking the completion 
and perfection of religion and morality. 3 But Christianity 
can be this only when the Christian movement has 
achieved its final development, and has succeeded in 
establishing a humanitarian civilization, a Christian 
state of society. Christianity is not a static thing. To 
regard Jesus himself as standing other than at the be¬ 
ginning of a great new movement in human culture is to 
misunderstand him culturally and historically. 4 Even the 

1 A critical discussion will be found In Chapter V, pp. 145-149. 

a See The Social Problem, p. 71, also Introduction to Social Psy - 
chology, pp. 159-161; 219-220. 

• See Case, The Evolution of Early Christianity, Chapter I. This is 
not saying, of course, that Jesus did not enunciate certain final 
principles in religion and ethics. The whole argument of this book 
is in one sense an attempt to show that Jesus did. 

4 Compare the words of Eucken in answering the question raised 
in the title of his book, Can We Still Be Christians? “We not only 
can but must be Christians—only, however, on the condition that 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTIANITY 83 


words of Jesus, though they be together with his life the 
touchstone of the Christian spirit, mark only the begin¬ 
ning of the unfolding of a new conception of human re¬ 
lationships, a social life, non-predatory in character and 
patterned upon the ideals of good will, mutual service, 
and brotherhood among men. 


Christianity started, then, as a religion of love and of 
human service, and its permanent successes have largely 
come through its having this character. Even though the 
world was not ready to receive and to carry out its prin¬ 
ciples, and though its followers soon distorted them be¬ 
yond description, yet impartiality must lead us to acknowl¬ 
edge that it started as an idealistic social movement in 
the Greco-Roman world, marking the dawn of a religion 
of humanity. Moreover, it is only fair to add that through 
all the centuries the best representatives of Christianity 
have always held to the idealistic social point of view. 
The place of Christianity in the evolution of religion and 
its social significance accordingly is clear. We have said 
that it is an endeavor to transcend tribal and national 
religion and ethics by a religion of the love and service 
of humanity as a whole. In other words, it is an endeavor 
to establish a world-wide, ideal human society, in which 
justice and good will shall be realized, upon a religious 
basis. Its aim, as has been well said, is nothing less than 
the creation of “a new world.” 1 

Christianity be recognized as a progressive historic movement still 
in the making, that it be shaken free from the numbing influence of 
ecclesiasticism and placed upon a broader foundation.” (p. 218.) 

• A totally different view of Christianity has been presented by some 
German theologians. Their views may be found best summed up in 
Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical Jesus. According to this view 
the teaching of Jesus was eschatological and did not concern this 
world. This eschatological view of the teachings of Jesus will be 
discussed further in Chapters V and VI, but it may be pointed 


84 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


The “Enthusiasm of Humanity,” then, as Sir J. R. 
Seeley said in his Ecce Homo —one of the first books to 
interpret rightly the religion of Jesus—is the center and 
core of Christianity. Love was the characteristic virtue 
of the new religion, hut love socially directed, the love of 
God being expressed and measured in terms of the love of 
man. Religious faith and enthusiasm were to release the 
energies of men and make them free to build the divine 
society—the “Kingdom of God”—in which a redeemed 
humanity was to be realized. But before this could be 
done the bondage of the human soul to sin and selfishness, 
to cynical indifference and unbelief, must end; man must 
become reconciled to God as Father and dedicated to his 
cause and kingdom. But Jesus did not conceive that this 
Utopia could be created merely by changes in individual 
souls without moral conflicts in the external social order. 
On the contrary, the Christian life was to be a continual 
strife against the forces of evil, not only against those 
within, but also against the wickedness entrenched in the 
social order and maintained by those in authority. The 
Christian life was to have its militant side, though its 
weapons were not carnal. This was necessarily so, for, 
as Seeley says, “The Enthusiasm of Humanity creates an 
intolerant anger against all who do wrong to human 
beings, an impatience of selfish enjoyment, a vindictive 
enmity to tyrants and oppressors, a bitterness against 
sophistry, superstition, self-complacent heartless specula- 

out here that it was quite natural that such a view should grow up 
in Germany (especially) where for a long time any attempt to apply 
humanitarian ideals was regarded with disfavor by authorities in 
both church and state. It may also be proper to remark here that 
the central principle of Jesus—the love and service of man—becomes 
quite unintelligible (to a plain man) if he meant his teaching to be 
primarily “eschatological.” The whole trend of German theology, 
indeed, seems at bottom to be hostile to the social conception of 
Christianity. Compare Thomas, Religion — Its. Prophets and False 
Prophets, especially p. VIII and Chapters VI-VITI. 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTIANITY 85 

tion, an irreconcilable hostility to every form of impos¬ 
ture, such as the uninspired inhumane soul could never 
entertain.” 


But if this is the social meaning and aim of Chris¬ 
tianity, why, it may be asked, has historical Christianity 
accomplished so little during all the centuries to establish 
justice and good will among men? The answer to such 
a question, if it were to attempt completeness, would have 
to review not only the whole history of the Christian 
church, but the whole history of the world since the intro¬ 
duction of Christianity. The chief things in the past 
which have been obstacles to the achievement of a Chris¬ 
tian state of human society, however, may perhaps be 
summarized under six heads: The first is the fact that 
Christianity has in the main been taken by professed 
Christians as a theological and metaphysical doctrine per¬ 
taining to the salvation of the soul in a life beyond rather 
than as a practical ethical and social attitude. The world 
into which Christianity was introduced was dominantly 
theologically minded, 1 and it has remained in that state 
until very recent times. The second obstacle which Chris¬ 
tianity as a social and ethical system encountered was the 
pagan religions and morals of the ancient world, with their 
sanctions of barbarism, which, we shall try to show in the 

1 Says Wells (Outline of History , Vol. I, pp. 591-592) : “Jesus had 
called men and women to a giant undertaking, to the renunciation of 
self, to the new birth into the kingdom of love. The line of least > 
resistance for the flagging convert was to intellectualize himself away 
from this plain doctrine, this stark proposition, into complicated 
theories and ceremonies. ... By the fourth century we find all the 
Christian communities so agitated and exasperated by tortuous and 
elusive arguments about the nature of God as to be largely negligent 
of the simpler teachings of charity, service and brotherhood that 
Jesus had inculcated.” An excellent discussion of the reasons for 
the failure of the teachings of Jesus to be understood by his followers 
will be found in Thomas’s Religion—Its Prophets and False 
Prophets (Macmillan, 1918). 


86 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

next chapter, have very definitely survived even in the 
traditions of our present civilization. From the first, the 
pagan state of religion and morals forced Christianity in 
practical life to compromise; and pagan habits of thought 
and feeling made it almost impossible for all except a few 
minds to comprehend the meaning of the social teachings 
of Christianity. 1 The third obstacle to the social success 
of Christianity has been the failure of its representatives 
to appreciate the importance of the material and economic 
factors in the life of man. 

Man is not only a spiritual being with spiritual, that is, 
social and ethical, wants; but he is also a material being 
hemmed about by the forces of the material world. Ilis 
spiritual life can only blossom and come to fruitage under 
favorable material and economic conditions. If it is true, 
as Jesus said, that “man does not live by bread alone/’ it 
is also true that man cannot live without bread. The 
material wants of life must be satisfied, in other words, 
in some proper measure before the spiritual life can have 
a fair chance to develop. The social ideals of religion, if 
they are to be practical, cannot concern themselves ex¬ 
clusively with the immaterial things of life. The cry of 
the masses for bread must not be met by presenting them 
a stone, in the form of ethical truth regarding the value 
of a mind above the things of this world. Nor did Jesus 
so teach or so act, one cannot but remark. When religion 
develops this sort of other-worldliness, 2 it is bound to be- 


1 See Glover, The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire. 

* Much of this “otherworldliness” of primitive Christians was, of 
course, due to their Millenarianism, and through all the Christian 
centuries Millenarianism has been an influence which has kept the 
church from undertaking its true task. See Chapter VI. Says 
Professor E. C. Hayes (Sociology and Ethics, p. 1): “The substi¬ 
tution of a mystic doctrine of the ‘second coming’ for the practical 
purpose for which the founder of Christianity lived and died is the 
moat pathetic of all perversions of a noble teaching.” 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTIANITY 87 


come a stumbling block to human progress, and to be 
accused of being merely a means to quiet the justifiable 
discontent of the suffering masses. Now the social failure 
of historical Christianity in the past has been largely due 
to the non-recognition of this truth; and this is the main 
reason why some men have lost their faith in the social 
power of religion. 

A social and humanitarian religion cannot regard any¬ 
thing in human life as alien to itself. In a sense it is 
concerned as much with the material conditions of life 
as with the spiritual, 1 because it does not conceive that 
social redemption is possible without control, for the sake 
of the higher social values, over all of the conditions of 
life. In other words, it is quite as much the aim of social 
religion to transform the environment in which the indi¬ 
vidual must live as to bring to the individual soul re¬ 
demptive truth and spiritually uplifting influences; and 
it is the material, quite as much as it is the spiritual en¬ 
vironment which must be transformed, if social religion 
is to succeed in its great work of creating an ideal human 
society in which justice and good will shall be realized. 
To this point we shall return again. 

A fourth thing which has been an obstacle to the 
achievement of a Christian state of society during the last 
few centuries, has been the extreme individualism of 
Protestant Christianity. This has led to “an absence of 
the sense of responsibility for the social order which has, 
from the beginning, maimed and distorted Protestant 
Christianity.” 2 It tended to render, in many cases, the 
religious life of Protestant peoples a socially sterile sub¬ 
jectivism and to narrow the object of religious enthusiasm 

1 See Chapters VIII, IX and X. 

2 Fitch, Preaching and Paganism, p. 67. Compare p. 113 of this 
book, 


88 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


from the redemption of humanity to the redemption of 
a few individuals. Even yet some Protestant denomina¬ 
tions have scarcely freed themselves from the blighting 
influence of such religious individualism. 

A fifth obstacle, closely akin to the last, to the realiza¬ 
tion of Christian ideals in social life, has been the unin¬ 
telligent use which Christians have made of the Bible, 
often taking all parts as equally inspired and on the same 
plane. The result has been that the teachings of Jesus 
have been often neglected and that the actual Christianity 
taught has been a strange mixture of Old Testament re¬ 
ligion and Pauline theology. 1 

A sixth obstacle to the social success of Christianity has 
been its failure to ally itself with humane science. The 
church hitherto has failed to see that the great enemy of 
mankind is ignorance. It has failed to understand that 
the redemption of humanity, the creation of an ideal so¬ 
ciety in which the divine will shall be realized, can be 
compassed only through a full knowledge of all the forces 
which make or mar human life, both individually and 
collectively. Instead of devoting itself to the promotion 
of such knowledge, the church has often presented the 


i A professor of religious education in an orthodox school of religion 
writes me: “Preachers still pay more attention to Paul’s theology than 
to the teachings of Jesus. There are two reasons for this: The 
orthodox notion of inspiration puts Paul’s teachings on a par with 
those of Jesus; and this has made it easier to preach theology than 
to preach social Christianity because theology is in the realm of 
opinion, while social Christianity is in the realm of everyday life.” 

For an interesting attempt to dissociate the teachings of Jesus from 
Pauline theology, though often crude and uncritical, see Singer’s 
The Rival Philosophies of Jesus and Paul. Safer guides, however, 
will be found in such works as Kent’s Social Teachings of the 
Prophets and Jesus, Chaps. XXV, XXVI, and his Work and Teach¬ 
ings of the Apostles; Smith’s Guide to the Study of the Christian 
Religion (see especially Chaps. V and IX) ; King’s Ethics of Jesus; 
and Mathew’s The Social Teaching of Jesus. For a view the oppo¬ 
site of Singer’s, see Bacon’s Jesus and Paul, especially Lecture III. 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTIANITY 89 

sorry spectacle of opposing the advance of science, and 
especially its extension to human affairs. 

Not only must the failures of historical Christianity 
he fully recognized, but we must also recognize the fre¬ 
quent failure hitherto of all humanitarian religion for the 
reasons just mentioned. The social failure of religion, 
however, is like the social failure of science; it has been 
a failure at times to envisage the whole of the social 
reality and the whole of human life. In our rapidly 
changing and increasingly complex social w y orld such 
failure is to be expected. Only a religious or scientific 
dogma which fails to see that religion is a growing, evolv¬ 
ing thing, still to be perfected, would throw aside religion 
because it has failed in the past and is still very far from 
meeting the full needs of our social life. All of our in¬ 
stitutions are failures in this sense. Yet one who would 
discard the family or government, for example, because 
they have failed in the past and still fall short of meeting 
the requirements of our present civilization, would be 
foolish. The most conspicuous failure of all, the candid 
scientific mind will readily admit, is science itself. For 
modern science until very recently has conspicuously failed 
to envisage human life as a complex whole, and even in 
many instances, indeed, to take cognizance of social 
reality at all. Yet the scientific mind does not lose faith 
in science because of the failures of science. On the con¬ 
trary, because of its method and its aim the very failures 
of science are an incentive to the further development of 
science. 

In the same way the failures of religion attest to its 
supreme worth and in all rational minds are an incentive 
to its further development. No human institution has 
grown in any other way than through successes and fail- 


90 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


ures; and one must admit that the failures of institu¬ 
tions have more often contributed to their rational de¬ 
velopment than their successes. The hopeful thing in this 
world of ours is that human life and civilization are ever 
turning defeat into victory. It is time that those who see 
the social value of religion—who see that religion is not 
less needed than science to meet the problems of our com¬ 
plex human living together—should rally and turn what¬ 
ever defeats religion has sustained into victory. The 
development of humanitarian religion is only just begin¬ 
ning; 1 but it must be developed on a world-wide scale if 
humanitarian civilization is to go forward with its work. 

Moral renewal is now obviously the one thing most 
needed in Western civilization. Only the development of 
vital, humanitarian religion can save Western civilization 
from defeat. If this is so, there is urgent need of a re¬ 
valuation of Christianity. For, as a great secular news¬ 
paper has recently said, 2 one might as well forget the law 
of gravitation in the physical world as to ignore in the 
social world the ethical principles which Jesus enunciated. 
Humanity would be about as safe in the one case as in 
the other, as the recent history of the world sufficiently 
attests. Many social thinkers of the present see that the 
world needs a rebirth of vital religion, but many of these 
fail to see that a foundation was laid in religion and ethics 
by Jesus as stable as the foundation laid by Copernicus 
in astronomy or by Darwin in biology. They look for a 
new religion. In the autumn of 1914 the writer heard in 
London a great English social thinker say that he saw 

1 Conservative scientific estimates place the duration of man’s life 
upon earth at not less than 250,000 years. Compared with this long 
past, as has often been pointed out, Christianity has been at work 
only a few minutes. 

2 The Nation, December 21, 1918 (Vol. 107, p. 762). 


SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTIANITY 91 


no way out of the present crisis in our civilization unless 
there should perchance again arise a religious leader of 
the simplicity, dignity, and exaltation of character of 
Jesus of Nazareth, who could lead the nations to peace, 
justice, and brotherhood. But with much more insight 
into our social and moral problems, as well as into the 
nature of Christianity, Henry C. Emery, formerly a pro¬ 
fessor of economics in Yale University, has said: “We are 
told by some writers that the world is waiting in an agony 
of expectation for some great social philosopher who shall 
bring to it the new message of salvation. If so, the world 
is wrong, for there is no message to bring it peace from 
its manifold ills, save that heard nineteen centuries ago 
from the profoundest of all social philosophers, the Man 
of Nazareth.” 1 

With dispassionate impartiality, Professor Ross, too, 
has said: “I suppose that all students of society would 
accept something like this as the formula for social prog¬ 
ress: The maximizing of harmony and co-operation and 
the minimizing of hostility and conflict. Now when you 
stop to think of it, is it not wonderful that in the Gospels 
we find provided just the religion which is best suited to 
realize the sociologists’ ideal? From the point of view 
of improvement in human relations, humanity has in this 
religion an asset of indescribable value.” 2 


1 Quoted by Strong, The New World Religion , p. 479. In a public 
lecture before the University of Colorado, August 10, 1921, Dr. A. B. 
Wolfe, professor of economics and sociology in the University of 
Texas, whose entire detachment from all traditionalism is well known, 
similarly declared: “The Western world needs to be converted to 
Christianity almost as much as it needs conversion to science. By 
Christianity I mean precisely the ethics of Jesus.” 

So, too, Professor Simkhovitch says: “Christ’s insight was one 
which future generations may rediscover but can never upset.” 
(Toward the Understanding of Jesus , p. 59.) 

2 Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, Vol. XIV 
(1919), p. 133. 


92 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


The fundamental principles of Christianity, in other 
words, are in harmony with the fundamental principles 
of social science, and the world needs only to develop and 
apply those principles to have a religion in accord with 
modern social science. That scientific knowledge of hu¬ 
man relationships should point to the same conclusions 
reached in religious development two millenniums ago will 
surprise no one who understands the principles of social 
evolution 1 which we have set forth in the preceding 
chapter. And the specific reasons why Jesus headed the 
movement for a social world patterned upon the relation¬ 
ships and values of the family life we have just indicated. 

If that movement was not a mistake, the world surely 
needs to acknowledge anew the leadership of Jesus, and 
this means that we need a rebirth of Christianity in the 
sense of the religion of Jesus. It is time that organized 
Christianity become synonymous with the religion of 
Jesus. The vision which Jesus had of a social life based 
upon love or good will is not an unrealizable dream. It 
is the only possible social future if the world is not going 
to turn back to barbarism. Men have never intelligently 
tried to realize it in their social life. Instead they have 
been satisfied with various cheap substitutes in the form 
of theological beliefs which have diverted their attention 
from the true problems of the religious life or with formal 
pretensions which have thinly disguised their underlying 
paganism. 

1 Similarly Wells (Outline of History, Vol. I, p. 584) says: 
“Though much has been written foolishly about the antagonism of 
science and religion, there is indeed no such antagonism. What all 
world religions declare by inspiration and insight, history, as it 
grows clearer, and science, as its range extends, display (as a reason¬ 
able and demonstrable fact) that men form one universal brother¬ 
hood, that they spring from one common origin, that their individual 
lives, their nations and races, interbreed and blend and go on to 
merge again at last in one common human destiny.” 


CHAPTER IV 


OUR SEMI-PAGAN CIVILIZATION 

The third thing which is needed for the proper recon¬ 
struction of religion is the perception of the essential 
paganism and barbarity of our present civilization. “We 
must see our present so-called civilization,” as justly says 
a recent writer/ “for what it is—a thing of barbarism, 
feeding upon the life of the race in the poverties of peace 
as well as in the woes of war—and get rid of it forth¬ 
with !” The immediate and momentous question before 
the world is what sort of civilization we shall aim to 
achieve; whether it shall he patterned after the ideals of 
the Christianity of the Gospels, or developed along other 
lines. Do we want a Christian world or not ? This has 
become the momentous question before our age because the 
ethical ideals of Christianity have been challenged in 
recent years as never before in the history of Western 
civilization, and pagan views of life have been openly ad¬ 
vocated. The trend in Western civilization as a whole 
for several years immediately prior to the breaking out 
of the Great War was unquestionably away from Chris¬ 
tian ideals. 1 2 


1 Dr. John Haynes Holmes. 

2 Unscientific observers prior to the Great War were almost in¬ 
variably optimistic, as critical mindedness towards one’s own civiliza¬ 
tion, if rational, requires considerable scientific detachment. This 
was particularly true of the daily press in the United States. But 
the war shattered the foundations of this uncritical optimism, and 
some at least were led to take a more critical attitude. The following 
paragraphs, taken from an editorial which appeared in one of the 

93 


94 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


While this fact was appreciated by practically all care¬ 
ful students of Western civilization, whether they were 
sympathetic with Christian ideals or not, yet the Chris¬ 
tian church as a whole, and especially its leaders, re¬ 
mained strangely blind in the matter. In the autumn of 
1913, for example, the writer spoke before a large church 
in one of our great cities, pointing out the trend in recent 
years towards a recrudescence of pagan ideals and prac¬ 
tices in our civilization. To his surprise he found the 
next morning not only that he was denounced in the news¬ 
papers as a “pessimist,” but that also all except two of 
the Christian ministers of the city who had been inter¬ 
viewed upon the subject disagreed with him and appar- 

more ably edited metropolitan American dailies in February, 1919, 
illustrate this and form a valuable bit of testimony: 

“For many years before the war we in America had been hearing 
how much better the world was becoming. Outwardly there was some 
proof of it. Slavery had vanished as a human institution, the in¬ 
quisition and the rack had gone to shameful oblivion, religious 
intolerance was passing, woman was being lifted from the position 
of chattel to one of equality with man—in fact, the superficial mani¬ 
festations of a better life were many. 

“Inwardly, however, we have been traveling the wrong road. 
Hypocrisy and sham were becoming national fetiches. Our most 
sublime institutions were being perverted to base commercial ends. 
Honesty was being measured by ability to keep out of jail, shady 
adroitness and border-line shrewdness in business were magnified as 
great virtues, while upright, unyielding honesty was sneered at as a 
concomitant of failure. 

“Even the very church was prostituted in the pursuit for money. 
Preachers in many instances contorted the word of God to meet the 
wishes of rich parishioners; others preached charity as the only real 
virtue, knowing that the wealthy in their congregation had money to 
give their fellow-man, but nothing else. Crooks and sharpers became 
deacons and pillars, for under the cloak of a religious life they found 
it much easier to fleece the widow and the orphan. 

“The money lust infected our courts, debauched our literature and 
our schools, lhe successful man was the rich man; others were 
failures. Children were taught to be good business men, good traders, 
honest if possible, but successful at all events. The Golden Calf had 
a place of honor in all the meeting places of men.” 

The present tendency to attribute everything which we judge to be 
wrong with our civilization to the effects of the war is, of course 
entirely uncritical. 


OUK SEMI-PAGAN CIVILIZATION 


95 


ently thought that ho was attacking the church. Within 
a year, however, the atrocities of the German armies in 
a score of Belgian cities gave startling evidence to the 
world of the trend toward paganism in our civiliza¬ 
tion. The Great War, indeed, revealed the unpleasant 
fact that our civilization was still not far removed from 
barbarism. 1 

Men began to ask many questions. Has Christianity as 
a social system proved a failure? Is a Christian society 
possible ? Is Christianity “irretrievably obsolescent” ? 
Are not human brotherhood, universal justice, and uni¬ 
versal good will hut idle dreams, “ a species of oriental 
mysticism,” in a world ruled by force and swayed by in¬ 
dividual and group egoism ? In order to he honest, should 
we not frankly go back to paganism as our rule of life? 

1 Destructive criticism is not a pleasant task, especially not to the 
writer of this book. He hopes that the reader will understand that 
such criticism is here undertaken with a constructive purpose, and 
undertaken only because twenty-five years of careful study of all 
phases of our civilization have convinced him of the substantial truth 
of the conclusions herewith presented. The main argument is not 
retrogression, but the survival in our civilization of pagan and bar¬ 
barous elements, which recrudesce in periods of change and confusion 
like the present. This allows, however, for some degree of real 
retrogression in certain respects. This, indeed, every scientific student 
of civilization expects, since history shows, not uniform progress, but 
an alternation of progress and regress with, of course, a balance on the 
side of progress in the long run. 

While the writer believes that he has presented a “true bill” 
against nineteenth century mores, he sees no cause for discourage¬ 
ment in the facts mentioned or in the present situation, if people can 
be awakened to the falsity of the standards by which they have tried 
to live. He would not even agree, therefore, with the relative pes¬ 
simism of Professor Santayana, who in his recent book on Character 
and Opinion in the United States, says (p. VI) : “Civilization is per¬ 
haps approaching one of those long winters that overtake it from 
time to time. A flood of barbarism from below may soon level all the 
fair works of our Christian ancestors, as another flood two thousand 
years ago levelled those of the ancients—such a catastrophe would 
be no reason for despair—under the deluge and watered by it, seeds 
of all sorts would survive against the time to come.” 


96 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


But what do we mean by “paganism?” Fundamentally 
we mean the type of social life and the ethical ideals which 
Machiavelli and Nietzsche discovered, or thought they dis¬ 
covered, in the civilization of Greece and Rome previous 
to the advent of Christianity—a type of society, in other 
words, in which power and pleasure are frankly avowed 
as the ends of individual and group action. Machiavelli 
found in pre-Christian Rome his great model. The career 
of that world-conquering state, he thought, showed that 
the only end of the state was power, that men were ex¬ 
clusively moved by pure self-interest or egoism, and that 
public policies could not be based upon Christian mo¬ 
rality. His ideal was that of the ruthless militant state, 
whose only aim was the expansion of its power and ulti¬ 
mately world dominion over other peoples. In much the 
same spirit Nietzsche discovered in pre-Christian Greece 
and Rome the foundation for his doctrine that power is 
the supreme aim of all life. It was Greece rather than 
Rome, however, which especially afforded Nietzsche his 
model. The Greeks, with their child-like joy in life, their 
love of pleasure and amusement, their sensuous aestheti¬ 
cism; the Romans, with their frank acceptance of power 
as the only end of public policy; the ancient Teutonic 
tribesmen, with their joy in battle and in the exercise of 
ruthless might,—all these appealed to Nietzsche as so 
much in line with his social ideal, that the coming of 
Christianity to disturb this “natural order” seemed to him 
the greatest calamity in human history. 

Of course, the situation in the ancient world was not 
so simple as Machiavelli and Nietzsche pictured it. There 
was no single form of paganism; there were many forms, 
and even in pre-Christian times there was a striving 
towards something higher than the immoralism which 
Machiavelli and Nietzsche admired. Thus in Greece, 


OUR SEMI-PAGAN CIVILIZATION 


97 


Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle attempted to refute the 
Sophists with their doctrines that “might makes right,” 
and that “pleasure is the good.” But as Nietzsche says, 
the movement which Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle stand 
for, was not truly representative of Greek life. Nietzsche 
regards them as corruptors of Greece, much as Chris¬ 
tianity was later of the whole world. 1 The true Greece 
of history, we must admit with Nietzsche, was the Greece 
of the Sophists and Epicureans. The true Rome was not 
that of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, but that of Caesar, 
Nero, and Trajan. The Roman Empire rested essentially 
upon the predatory use of brute force, upon the subjuga¬ 
tion and exploitation of weaker peoples, with scarcely any 
aim beyond that of world dominion. Greece, with its sen¬ 
suous aestheticism, and Rome, with its brutal predatory 
militarism, have been perhaps the chief sources of cor¬ 
ruption in the traditions of our civilization; but the Teu¬ 
tonic tribesmen of the north with their predatory tradi¬ 
tions might be considered as furnishing a third source of 
paganism almost as important as the first two, were it not 
for the fact that these tribesmen later accepted Greco- 
Roman civilization and largely supplanted the models of 
their culture by the models of Greece and Rome. 

On the whole, then, Machiavelli and Nietzsche were 
right in finding a distinct type of culture, antecedent to 
our present civilization, which the Christian movement 
tried to set aside. The student of civilization is familiar 
with that type of culture also among non-European peo¬ 
ples. He finds that it characterizes all peoples living in 
or just emerging from the predatory stage of culture which 
we have described as “barbarism.” All barbarous peoples 
possess as one dominant characteristic of their culture 
crude ideals of power and pleasure as the proper ends 

1 See The Will to Power , pp. 345-366. 


98 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

for action of both individuals and groups. Indeed, other 
ends of action scarcely occur to them; and as these are 
the ends set before both individuals and groups, such 
peoples are possessed by illusions of advantage to them¬ 
selves in the domination, spoliation, or exploitation of 
others. “Paganism” is therefore simply the moral and 
religious equivalent of “barbarism” as a cultural term. 
“Paganism,” or “barbarism,” evidently underlay, in the 
main, the culture of Greece and Rome. It also evidently 
underlies the culture of the present, since it is that stage 
of culture which lies back of our civilization and from 
which we are but just emerging. 

What is the relation of the religion of Jesus to the 
pre-Christian religions and morals which we have termed 
“paganism” ? It was an effort, as we have shown in the 
previous chapter, to transcend these and to furnish a new 
set of social patterns of a universalized humanitarian 
character with a religious sanction. The new pattern 
ideas of social relationships which the Christian move¬ 
ment initiated were in necessary conflict with those of the 
older predatory civilization in which they started; and 
this conflict has continued down to the present time. 
Even now, after two thousand years of slow emergence 
from barbarism, the world seems about to relapse back 
into it. Nor is this difficult historically to understand. 
From the first so-called Christian civilization has been a 
very mixed affair. Much even in the Christian church has 
been non-Christian, or rather stark paganism. 1 Through 
all so-called Christian centuries pagan ideals have been 
uppermost in politics and in business, and often in litera¬ 
ture, in art, in ethics, and in religion. The Greco-Roman 

1 As one of my colleagues says, there are even yet so many pagan 
survivals in the church that effective religion often finds it necessary 
to express itself through other agencies and organizations. 


OUR SEMI-PAGAN CIVILIZATION 


99 


ideal of life has more often triumphed over the Christian 
ideal than most Christians are willing to admit. Ever 
and again there has been a recrudescence of the pagan 
ideals of power and pleasure as the chief ends of life. 
The Renaissance was especially marked by the recrudes¬ 
cence of paganism. Indeed, as one impartial writer has 
put it, “The ideal of the Renaissance was to restore pagan 
standards in polite learning, in philosophy, in sentiment, 
in morals.” 1 Not simply Machiavelli and Nietzsche, hut 
a whole series of men of thought and men of action have 
at one time or another advocated the restoration of pagan 
standards in whole or in part in our civilization. 

Modern civilization has, indeed, been an inharmonious 
synthesis, or rather a continuous conflict, between these 
antagonistic views of our social and moral life. In the 
minds of some this has been interpreted to mean that the 
elements of worth in what we call “paganism” are so great 
that they must be given equal validity with the social 
values set up by Christianity. But it may be pointed out 
that there can be no compromise between a socialized 
morality and religion, and the ethics of power and pleas¬ 
ure for which paganism stands. There can be no com¬ 
promise between humanitarian civilization and barbarism, 
and therefore none between Christianity and individual 
or group egoism. This is not to deny that certain ele¬ 
ments in the pagan ideal of life may have worth. The 
self-culture, the happiness and joy in nature and in life, 
and even the love of power which paganism so stressed, 
have their place in a humanitarian civilization; but theirs 
is not the first place. 2 The first place must be given to 

1 Santayana, The Winds of Doctrine , p. 38. 

a The argument of this book is, of course, that the Christian ideal 
of service of mankind presents that synthesis of the Greek ideal of 
self-assertion and the oriental ideal of self-renunciation which Hob- 
house points out as necessary. (The Rational Good, p. XVIII.) 


9 


> >. 


100 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


the sense of social obligation, to the desire to serve and 
benefit mankind, not only all who now exist, but who may 
exist in the future. Such a social point of view must 
lead, moreover, to a policy of social conservation and of 
social self-realization rather than to one of self-gratifica¬ 
tion and self-culture. Service becomes the chief end of 
life for the individual, and also for groups, rather than 
power or pleasure. Pagan ideals will cease to be dan¬ 
gerous when they are definitely subordinated to the Chris¬ 
tian ideal of life, but only then. Our civilization needs 
a synthesis of its inharmonious elements, hut it can get 
that synthesis only through accepting the fundamental 
Christian principle that the service of God must consist 
in the service of mankind. 

Modern civilization has been troubled by the recrudes¬ 
cence of pagan ideals only because it has not definitely 
accepted the Christian ideal of life. 1 Power and pleasure 
have remained its chief ideals. Even when these have not 
been held up as ends for individuals, they have been held 
up as ends for groups. We must not, of course, blame 
overmuch the influence of pagan antiquity for this. While 
the world has never succeeded in ridding itself of the 
ideals of barbarism, or rather in definitely subordinating 
them to higher ideals, the conditions of our own time, to¬ 
gether perhaps with certain tendencies of human nature, 
are even more responsible for this than the tradition of 
our pagan past. In other words, many conditions in the 
modern world have released and powerfully stimulated 
the original selfish impulses of human nature. During 

1 Says Professor Conklin (op. cit. p. 170) : “When one reflects on 
the fact that for nineteen centuries so great a part of the world that 
professes to be Christian has remained heathen at heart, and that 
to-day the teachings of Jesus are generally regarded by his so-called 
followers as too lofty to be practical, we may well wondeT whether 
mankind is making any progress in religion.” 


OUR SEMI-PAGAN CIVILIZATION 


101 


the nineteenth century external authority of every sort 
declined to a minimum in Western civilization, and no 
new means of adequate social control were developed. 
The authority of the church, for example, reached its low 
ebb, and, under the assaults of criticism which was merely 
destructive , 1 the authority of the Bible waned. At the 
same time through invention and discovery and the open¬ 
ing up of unexploited regions of the earth, wealth in¬ 
creased to an extent beyond the dreams of previous ages. 
Even though the increase of wealth did not occur in all 
classes, the increase affected the standards of living and 
conduct in all classes. A greater number of individuals 
found it possible to devote themselves to selfish aims, to 
the getting of money, of power, or of pleasure than ever 
before, and the example of these individuals affected all 
classes. 

Thus by the decline of external authority and the in¬ 
crease of wealth human nature suddenly emerged in the 
nineteenth century from its swaddling bands, as it were. 
The flood gates of human selfishness were opened wider 
than they had ever before been opened to the masses of 
men. At the same time, a gospel of individual and na¬ 
tional success was preached everywhere. Material stand¬ 
ards of life came to dominate among the masses. All 
these things made a swing hack toward paganism inevi¬ 
table in the later years of the nineteenth century and in 
the earlier years of the twentieth . 2 Literature began to 


1 A fully scientific criticism would, of course, have been con¬ 
structive. See Chapter V. 

2 We must always remember, as was pointed out at the beginning 
of Chapter III, that we began to outgrow barbarism but yesterday. 
In the early stages of civilization, in which we still are, we must 
expect frequent relapse into barbarism, as human history proceeds by 
the “trial and error method.” Such relapses will continue until the 
mass of men have learned to discriminate between the pagan or bar¬ 
barous elements in our culture and the Christian. 


102 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


take on a pagan cast, such as it had not had even in the 
Renaissance. In commerce, in business, in polite society, 
and in amusements pagan standards came more and more 
to the front. A large element in the privileged classes 
refused to recognize or to conform to any standard at all 
save their own pleasure and their own wishes. They be¬ 
littled by contemptuous indifference, if they did not ridi¬ 
cule outright, Christian standards in living and in con¬ 
duct. Scandalous divorces and marriages became com¬ 
mon to an extent that the world had not seen since the 
decadent days of Rome. The wealthy set an example of 
extravagance, luxury, and fast living which inevitably 
demoralized the rest of society. But these were only 
straws upon the surface. The program of self-interest, 
material satisfaction and brute force came to extend 
through and through the fabric of Western civilization. 1 
It was not simply the moral standards of the indi¬ 
vidual which were rebarbarized, but, as we now know, the 
life of whole nations. 2 It was, indeed, in the realm of 
politics and of international relations, a realm which had 
never been greatly influenced by Christian standards, that 


1 Says Bishop F. J. McConnell (Journal of Religion, Vol. I, p. 198) : 
“The whole atmosphere in which the present generation has been 
reared has made for individualism and for the search for as much 
personal profit as can be found anywhere. . . . The problem is that 
of the transformation of an entire social climate.” 

* “A prominent and conservative university president recently said 
in public that the present age is the most decadent in history, with 
the exception of the days just before the fall of the Roman Republic 
and before the French Revolution. He mentioned ‘dishonesty perme¬ 
ating public and private life alike, tainting the administration of 
justice, tainting our legislative halls, tainting the conduct of private 
business, polluting at times even the church itself.’ In the same 
utterance, he averred that ‘a source of infinite evil in every modern 
society is impurity of word and act.’ He went on to assert that ‘if 
there is to be social and political regeneration in our Republic and 
in the rest of the world, it must be by a tremendous regeneration of 
moral ideals.’ ” Hudson, The Truths We Live By, p. 22. 


OUR SEMI-PAGAN CIVILIZATION 103 

the recrudescence of paganism was chiefly to express 
itself. 

Strive to ignore it as we may, the real causes of the 
Great War were in the “mores’’ of Western civilization. 
And that these mores were fundamentally pagan or anti- 
Christian does not admit of doubt. In concrete terms, the 
causes of the Great War were pagan mores in political life, 
in business life, and in social relations in general. Anti- 
Christian politics, anti-Christian business, anti-Christian 
ideals of life, not pressure of population upon material 
resources, not geographical conditions, not biological neces¬ 
sities connected with race, were the real causes of the 
great conflict. These causes were everywhere in Western 
civilization, but they particularly came to a head in Ger¬ 
many. Germany can be blamed for the war only to the 
extent that Germany led in re-paganizing the world. The 
dominance in Germany of a militaristic tradition, the rise 
there of imperialistic commercialism, and the undermin¬ 
ing of Christian ideals of life among the Germans by these 
two causes and by the rise of a destructive criticism of 
religion and ethics and of a materialistic science, fitted 
Germany to bring to a focus all of the anti-Christian forces 
in modern civilization. She became the “scourge of 
God” to show the nations the evil of their ways. 

But, of course, anti-Christian or Machiavellian politics 
was not confined to Germany. Though Frederick II, Bis¬ 
marck, Treitschke, and a host of lesser German political 
thinkers formulated Machiavellian politics into an odious 
creed and justified it, yet their formulations were but little 
more than statements of the actual practices of many Eu¬ 
ropean states. At the very time, indeed, this odious pagan 
political philosophy was taking shape in Germany, Great 
Britain and Russia were permitting no ethical scruples 


104 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

to stand in the way of their imperialistic ambitions. Eu¬ 
ropean nations in general, as a recent writer has said, 
whatever their attitude toward Christianity as a private 
faith, deliberately accepted the thesis of its social im¬ 
practicability. The statesmen responsible for the diplo¬ 
macy of various European countries took it for granted 
that self-interest must be the supreme law of nations, and 
public sentiment sustained them in this attitude. 

Practically all of the nations of Europe, indeed, played 
the game of “grab and get” through the whole of the nine¬ 
teenth century with seemingly little suspicion that it was 
destined to bring upon them the direst sort of punishment. 
Germany was the only one that had the hardihood to for¬ 
mulate this policy into a political creed and, as it were, 
officially to adopt it. In this Germany is especially to he 
blamed, for in a sense the individual or nation which de¬ 
liberately adopts a creed of anti-social conduct is more 
dangerous than the individual or nation which occasion¬ 
ally indulges in such conduct. Beliefs, ideals, standards 
ultimately determine the character of nations as w r ell as 
of individuals. And Germany openly and unashamedly 
professed pagan political ideals while other nations, though 
often practicing them, yet disavowed them, and even just 
before the Great War in some cases seemed on the point 
of repenting their practice. But the evil spirit of 
Machiavelli with his doctrines that the only end of the 
state is power, and that in politics the end justifies the 
means, dominated the whole of Western civilization dur¬ 
ing the nineteenth century. 

Back of the anti-Christian politics of the modern world 
stood anti-Christian business. In an era of the world¬ 
wide expansion of industry and of the economic exploita¬ 
tion of the earth, it was easy for the economic doctrine 


OUR SEMI-PAGAN CIVILIZATION 105 


to grow up and receive general acceptance, that business 
was for profits only. An imperialistic, capitalistic in¬ 
dustry grew up, which set before itself as its one end the 
domination of the world’s markets for the sake of profits. 
This imperialistic capitalism found a ready tool in 
Machiavellian politics and in the growth of a hyper- 
nationalistic spirit. The whole commercial and industrial 
world of Western civilization became organized on essen¬ 
tially pagan lines. Profits, dividends, economic success, 
were aimed at, no matter what the expense to humanity. 
Self-interest was held to be the only possible basis for 
business enterprise, and this self-interest was usually in¬ 
terpreted to mean merely the interests of the business man 
as an individual. The obligations of business even to the 
community were overlooked, to say nothing of its wider 
responsibilities to humanity at large. 

Within the national life itself this anti-Christian spirit 
in the commercial and business world had a most disas¬ 
trous influence. The gospel of self-interest came to 
dominate not only industrial life but it spread to all other 
phases of the social life. Even the family life came to be 
looked upon as a matter of private convenience. No mat¬ 
ter how carefully the young were instilled with Christian 
ideals in the home and in the church, as soon as they got 
into the business world they felt compelled to lay aside 
these ideals and to adopt the pagan code of business 
morality, that in business self-interest alone must guide 
one’s conduct. Consequently business paganized a part of 
their life insidiously before they knew it; and gradually 
their whole moral life became weakened and undermined. 
The reactions of pagan business upon the public life of the 
nation were not less insidious and corrupting than upon 
its private life. Newspapers became filled with details 
how big business and little business did not scruple to do 


106 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


anything to insure profits and dividends. Exploitation 
of the economically weak, cynical disregard of human 
rights, and even revolting inhumanities in industry 
alienated economic classes, thus sapping the foundations 
of democracy, while corporations often maintained they 
had the privilege of exploiting the public by graft and 
corruption. Municipal governments were corrupted in 
many cases, state legislative bodies were bribed, 1 and when 
the United States government in the early years of the 
twentieth century undertook to insist, in even a slight de¬ 
gree, that business should he put upon the basis of public 
service, nearly the whole of the big business of the country 
threatened to go upon a “strike,” so little did the patriotic, 
to say nothing of the Christian, spirit permeate the larger 
business interests of the nation. 

A reflex result was that self-interest and class interest 
became in the nineteenth century the maxims of the labor¬ 
ing class also. The ideal of public service in laboring 
class movements was subordinated or forgotten. As the 
gospel of self-interest dominated the relations of employer 
and employee, the interests of the two were held to be 
diametrically opposed. Consequently there grew up the 
doctrine of class war with at least an implied correlated 
doctrine of class hate. Christianity, rationality, and 
altruism were scouted and even scorned as possible means 
for the solution of economic problems. The only solution 
of the problem of the relations between economic classes, 
nineteenth-century popular socialism held, was the forcible 
overthrow of the capitalist class by the working class. It 
is not too much to say that Marxian socialism, in par¬ 
ticular, took as its immediate goal the inspiring of the 
working class with the desire to dominate and destroy 
1 See It. C. Brooks, Corruption in American Politics and Life. 


OUR SEMI-PAGAN CIVILIZATION 107 

other social classes. As one of its most conspicuous ex¬ 
ponents has said in effect, its aim was to teach the work¬ 
ing class to “combine the old weapons of criticism with 
the new criticism of weapons.” In other words, Marxian 
socialism openly advocated the settlement of economic 
grievances between classes by resort to force. By the end 
of the nineteenth century, accordingly, Western civiliza¬ 
tion was confronted by a well-organized movement among 
the laboring classes, which was openly atheistic, mate¬ 
rialistic, and consciously aimed at class domination. The 
disastrous results of developing working class movements 
upon the pagan basis of self-interest and class interests 
must now be sufficiently evident from the case of Russia. 
But it is well to remember that the adoption of the preda¬ 
tory standards of paganism by a part of the laboring 
classes in Western civilization has been largely, if not 
entirely, a reflex of the practices of the socially more for¬ 
tunate classes. In other words, anti-Christian business 
has been largely responsible for the anti-Christian phases 
of working-class movements. 

Deeper than anti-Christian politics or anti-Christian 
business were anti-Christian ideals of life in Western 
civilization generally. Civilization is made up of tradi¬ 
tions, and traditions are made up of thoughts. The 
thinking classes in any cultural group, therefore, are ulti¬ 
mately responsible for the guidance of its civilization. 
Back of them, to be sure, may lie traditions and objective 
circumstances which influence their thought, but this fact 
does not detract from their responsibility as the creators 
and leaders of civilization. To get at the real ideals which 
animate any civilization, we must turn, therefore, to its 
literature, its art, its science, its religion, in brief, to the 
ideals and standards of its educated and socially privileged 


108 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


classes. What were the ideals and standards of the edu¬ 
cated classes of Western civilization before the Great 
War began? Were they dominantly pagan or Christian 
ideals ? 

If we turn to literature first, we find that a large part 
of the literature of the later nineteenth and earlier 
twentieth century was totally regardless of Christianity, 1 
that it derided or ignored Christian ideals. 2 We are not, 
of course, speaking of Christianity as a theology, but of 
Christianity as a system of ethics and of social life. 
European literature revelled in a purely destructive criti¬ 
cism of the traditional morality of Christendom in the 
family, in business, in general political and social rela¬ 
tions. The representatives of these tendencies were not a 
few minor literary men with no standing, but included 
the foremost names in the literature of the day. More¬ 
over, the writers who exploited these tendencies were 
usually the most popular ones, especially among the edu¬ 
cated classes. An indication of the moral condition of 
the intellectual classes may be found in the popularity in 
the later nineteenth century of the old Persian poet, Omar 
Khayyam, whose frankly pagan view of life seemed greatly 
to delight many intellectuals. But some found the rela- 

1 In an article on “Is Modern Literature Christless?” in The 
Christian Century, April 14, 1921, Dr. Joseph Fort Newton answers: 
“Much of it is. Most of it, indeed, is written as if Christ had never 
lived.” 

It is invidious, of course, to single out examples, but to illustrate 
our meaning we might take Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh, 
a book which, while it justly satirizes a pseudo-Christian society, is 
itself purely pagan in its point of view. No book has been more 
popular among the intellectual classes during the past twenty years. 

2 Says Professor E. C. Hayes ( Sociology and Ethics , p. 2) : “Moral 
disintegration is by no means peculiar to Germany. A large part of 
our own popular fiction consists in the subtlest advocacy of a pseudo¬ 
scientific immorality. . . . We are assured that nothing is wrong 
that is ‘natural,’ that in nature there is no higher and no lower, that 
altruism is only a form of selfishness and that reason has no prece¬ 
dence over the instincts that we share with the beasts.” 


OUR SEMI-PAGAN CIVILIZATION 109 


tively luxurious and effeminate paganism of such writers 
as Omar Khayyam not sufficiently strong for their taste. 
They preferred writers whose works, as has been said, 
it was irrelevant to criticize as immoral because they in¬ 
tended to he immoral. 1 The whole decadent school of 
literature and art regarded the moral standards of Chris¬ 
tianity as the most worthless sort of rubbish. 

The most fearless, most consistent exponent of this 
school was, of course, the German philosopher, Nietzsche, 
whose writings would deserve further consideration at this 
point if we had not already sufficiently indicated their 
importance for the understanding of the deep pagan cur¬ 
rent in our civilization. Nietzsche cannot possibly he 
dismissed as an exceptional, aberrant type; nor was he 
peculiarly German. A host of kindred writers were 
grouped about him in every country of Western civiliza¬ 
tion. He was, therefore, profoundly symptomatic of the 
spirit of his time, and, indeed, as we have already indi¬ 
cated, he will become in the future either the leader of 
the re-paganization of the world, or else the last of the 
great pagans of the nineteenth century to pass into ob¬ 
livion. We cannot escape Nietzsche when we confront 
the problem of our civilization. Yet his influence was 
political only indirectly, and economic scarcely at all. 
Rather the influence of Nietzsche and his kindred 
spirits was upon the general ideals of our social life. 
That the influence of these writers was tremendously 
anti-Christian there can be no doubt. For, regard the 
Nietzschean philosophy as we will, it can be summed up 
in a single sentence, that the only obligations which the 
individual needs to concern himself about are those of his 
own self-interest, and that the teachings of Jesus are the 

1 The New Republic , January 12, 1918, p. 312 (Vol. XIII). 


110 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

chief source of weakness and corruption in the modern 
world. 

Though professional philosophers have professed to 
despise the philosophy of Nietzsche as that of a mere 
literary man, yet there can be no doubt that it was deeply 
rooted in the philosophical tendencies of the nineteenth 
century. The individualistic, naturalistic, and material¬ 
istic tendencies of that philosophy all found expression in 
Nietzsche. In him we see the worship of the natural man, 
of freedom as an end in itself, of the superior individual 
as the only value worth considering, as well as the wor¬ 
ship of power. The truth is that the philosophy of the 
nineteenth century was rooted in Greek philosophy, and 
scarcely more than Greek philosophy did it escape from 
the traditional point of view and valuations of bar¬ 
barism. The best of the nineteenth-century philosophical 
thinkers, to be sure, sought strenuously to transcend these, 
and to put philosophy upon a truly social and humani¬ 
tarian basis; 1 but the more popular nineteenth-century 
philosophy remained enamoured of pleasure and power as 
the chief values of life. It sought for a standard of right 
in these abstractions and ignored the social life of man. 
It contended that the standard of right lay wholly within 
the individual, in his own happiness or self-development, 
and not in the interdependent life of all men. Such was 
the popular philosophy of the nineteenth century, and it 
is evident that it was more pagan than Christian. It 
made it impossible to discredit the predatory ethics of 
barbarism. 

It may seem hazardous for one writing in the name of 
science to assert that much science of the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury was even more anti-social, more anti-humanitarian, 

1 E.g., T. H. Green, Friedrich Paulsen, Josiah Itoyce. 


OUK SEMI-PAGAN CIVILIZATION 111 

and so, more anti-Christian, than its philosophy; hut we 
believe that this will be the judgment even of social science 
in the future. There is, of course, the excuse that mod¬ 
ern science is so recent in its development that it has not 
had time to become socialized. A great part of the science 
of the nineteenth century was, at any rate, socially nega¬ 
tive in its attitude. 1 It not only held that there was 
nothing in religion of serious scientific concern, but that 
the spiritual aspects of human life were outside of scien¬ 
tific reality; 2 and even in many cases it held that there 
could be no social science at all. Science, that is accurate, 
systematized knowledge it was held, could alone concern 
itself with the material and the physical. If any social 
science existed it must rigorously exclude from its con¬ 
sideration the psychic or the spiritual, at least as having 
any real influence in human affairs. Everything must be 
interpreted as belonging to one big machine. That such 
a conception belongs to the infantile stage of scientific 
development needs hardly seriously to be argued. Chil¬ 
dren and savages, it is well known, are apt to take a 
similar view of things. 

With such ignoring of the spiritual and the social, it is 
little surprising to know that nineteenth-century science 
only very late began serious attempts at the construction 
of socialized standards in morals and made no successful 

1 For illustration, see Henry Adams, The Degradation of the Demo¬ 
cratic Dogma, especially “A Letter to American Teachers of History.” 
Refutation of this sort of science, so far as it attempted to base itself 
upon biological facts, will be found in Professor J. Arthur Thomson's 
System of Animate Nature and Professor William Patten’s The Grand 
Strategy of Evolution: The Social Philosophy of a Biologist. 

2 Thus one of my colleagues, though himself a religious man, holds 
that science has no purpose except “the quantitative statement of 
objective facts.” This not only precludes the consideration of the 
psychic as such, but limits the field of science in a way not warranted 
by its history nor by the nature of the scientific attitude of mind. 
See p. 3. 


112 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


attempt at all at the construction of an international 
morality. Science remained in the nineteenth century 
immersed in its beginning tasks, the exploration and 
understanding of physical nature, and scarcely arrived at 
seriously undertaking the exploration and understanding 
of human social life. Though there were many excep¬ 
tions, it is fair on the whole to say that nineteenth- 
century science was negative toward higher social values, 
and instead of tending to build up higher social stand¬ 
ards and ideals, in many cases it actually tended to 
destroy these. If it had addressed itself properly to the 
great problems of human living together in our civiliza¬ 
tion, in the spirit of the service of mankind, the Great 
War would probably have been averted. 

All of these spiritual tendencies of the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury naturally found expression in the universities in 
Europe and America. One should never forget that 
Nietzsche was a university professor, and that the apolo¬ 
gists for Machiavelli and Nietzsche in Europe and 
America were chiefly men who held university chairs. 
These men were not confined to Germany, as so many 
would fain believe. There were von Treitschkes and 
Nietzsches of lesser renown in many universities of West¬ 
ern civilization. This, indeed, could not be otherwise, 
because institutions of learning, in free societies at least, 
are necessarily places where all the spiritual tendencies 
of the time come to a head, and where the decisive 
spiritual battles are fought. One can only regret, not 
the appearance of such thinkers in academic life, but 
rather only that they seemed to be, previous to the break¬ 
ing out of the Great War, getting the upper hand, to 
such an extent, indeed, that in some university circles 
for a scientific man to express his belief in Christian 
social ideals was for him to be more or less discounted by 


OUR SEMI-PAGAN CIVILIZATION 113 

his scientific colleagues. In many cases the universities 
of Western civilization thus became the chief centers of 
neo-paganism. In Germany this happened to be par¬ 
ticularly true. 

Even the Christian church itself became subtly affected 
by the pagan tendencies of the times. 1 We do not refer 
to the growth of “worldiness” in the church (though 
“worldliness” is frequently only a euphemism for pagan¬ 
ism), nor to the growth of negative criticism, but rather 
to the whole spirit developed by nineteenth-century 
Protestant Christianity. As one of the most enlightened 
religious thinkers of the present has said: “There grew 
up a conception of Christianity ... in principle largely 
self-centered and individualistic. The energies of Chris¬ 
tians found sufficient outlet in the preparation of the 
individual for the life after death, and the winning of 
new candidates for the citizenship of the future kingdom. 
Not transformation of this world, but escape from it, 
became the Christian message; not social leadership, but 
protest the function of the church.” 2 

Alongside of this comparatively common unsocialized 
type of Christianity existed less common, even more un¬ 
socialized types, such as so-called Christian mysticism. 
Since to the true mystic God is the only reality, he has 
no interest in the present world. 3 The mystic thus en¬ 
tirely inverts the Christian principle that the service of 
God must be sought in the service of man. 4 Mysticism, 

1 This in addition to the survival of pagan tendencies which we 
have already noted, (p. 86.) 

a W. Adams Brown, Is Christianity Practicable ?” pp. 25-26. 

* Ibid., p. 28. 

4 This is not true, of course, of those modified forms of mysticism in 
which the rational ethical elements of religion receive the main empha¬ 
sis, as among the Quakers. Some forms of mysticism of this sort, in¬ 
deed, approximate what we have called “positive Christianity/’ Thus 
the creed of Florence Nightingale: “I believe ... in the service of man 


114 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


in this individualistic sense, belongs to paganism rather 
than to Christianity; yet it was rampant in pretty nearly 
all branches of the Christian church during the nine¬ 
teenth century, greatly to the detriment of the church, 
because superficial thinkers took it to be one of the typical 
expressions of Christian religious life. 

Even nineteenth-century humanitarianism itself be¬ 
came largely perverted by the pagan tendencies of the 
age. It set up the soft and effeminate view of life too 
often; it seemed to make the pleasure and happiness of 
individuals now living often its only concern. The bar¬ 
baric standards of self-gratification and self-indulgence, 
rather than those of social conservation and social devel¬ 
opment, were all too frequently advocated in the name 
of humanitarian ideas. Thus the word in the minds of 
some became associated with hedonistic social ethics and 
with pampering social practices. It became opprobrious, 
therefore, to those who saw that right human living in¬ 
volved higher aims than mere relief from suffering and 
the accumulation of pleasant experiences. 


Thus it is evident that pagan ideas and ideals of life 
in general lay behind the anti-Christian politics and anti- 
Christian business of the nineteenth century. Our 

being the service of God, the growing into a likeness with him by 
love, the being one with him at last, which is Heaven”—would appeal 
to many not as “mysticism,” but as “the essence of common sense.” 
It must be admitted that mysticism is a relative matter, as there is 
normally an element of mysticism in all religion, as was granted in 
Chapter I. It is only when the mystic element is ascendant that there 
is danger of irrationality and anti-social tendencies. Subordinated to 
rationality, it is as harmless in religion as the sense of mystery is in 
science. The terms “mystic” and “mysticism” should therefore be 
reserved for those cases in which the supremacy of intelligence and 
reason is denied. For discussions of the place of mysticism in re¬ 
ligion, see the works of Hocking and Leuba above mentioned. For a 
careful, brief survey, see Coe, The Psychology of Religion, Chapter 


OUR SEMI-PAGAN CIVILIZATION 115 

analysis might go into further details to show how the 
taint of pagan barbarism clung to practically everything 
in nineteenth-century civilization; but our object has been 
merely to show that that civilization was dominantly non- 
Christian in character, a conclusion which is a mere 
truism to those who know both what the Christian ideal 
of life is, and what nineteenth-century civilization was. 
With scientific fairness we can say that the ruling classes 
in Europe and America in the nineteenth century ac¬ 
cepted a “conventional” Christianity, but that they rarely 
permitted it to interfere with the “mores” which con¬ 
trolled the practical affairs of their life. 1 They found it 
vastly easier to be conventional Christians than to be 
genuine followers of Jesus. In general they were careful 
not to let Christianity disturb the established order. And 
there is surely no evidence to show that as yet our civili¬ 
zation has changed its character. 2 3 We are still trying to 

1 While perhaps not unbiased, the report of the Japanese Com¬ 
mission in 1919, which investigated religious conditions in the United 

States, that “there is little evidence that the Christian religion is 
regarded as important by most of the people,” deserves consideration, 
as it tells us how our civilization appears to enlightened non- 
Christians. 

3 In a remarkable manifesto issued in May, 1921, by such leaders 
of religious thought in Great Britain as Dr. L. P. Jacks, Dr. W. B. 
Selbie, Dr. John Clifford, and Dr. A. E. Garvie the utmost appre¬ 
hension is still expressed. If to American readers their tone seems 
too pessimistic, it should be borne in mind that British thinkers stand 
nearer to the hard problems of our civilization than we do. The 
manifesto in part follows: “No lover of mankind or of progress, no 
student of religion, of morals, or of economics, can regard the present 
trend of affairs without feelings of great anxiety. Civilization itself 
seems to be on the wane. . . . The nations are filled with mistrust 
and antipathy for each other, the classes have rarely been so an¬ 
tagonistic, while the relation of individual to individual has seldom 
been so frankly selfish. 

“The vast destruction of life by war and the acute suffering which 
the war created seem to have largely destroyed human sympathy. . . . 
Never was greater need of all those qualities which make the race 
human, and never did they appear to be less manifest. 

“It is becoming increasingly evident that the world has taken a 


116 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


build our world upon the rotten foundations laid by the 
nineteenth century! 

However, it is, of course, true that in the nineteenth 
century we find the dawn of a better civilization breaking 
practically everywhere. This was true even of Germany, 
where, in spite of militarism, Machiavellian state craft, 
and neo-pagan philosophy and literature, there were 
philosophers, educators, religious workers, and political 
leaders who stood firmly by humanitarian ideals. Indeed, 
it was only in the last few decades previous to the begin¬ 
ning of the Great War, that marked retrogression in cer¬ 
tain circles and classes toward pagan and barbarous ideals 
of life took place in Western civilization. But this re¬ 
kindling of paganism found a world poorly organized to 
resist its spread. Everywhere practically the forces of 
good were disorganized. Good men emphasized their dif¬ 
ferences, and instead of pulling together, pulled apart. 
This was especially true of the Christian church; but it 
was also true of the humanitarian forces outside of the 
church. Even among the most advanced social idealists 
there was such confusion and disagreement, oftentimes 
even with respect to fundamental principles, that they 
could not work effectively together. On the other hand, 

wrong turn, which, if persisted in, may lead to the destruction of 
civilization.” 

In a similar spirit Professor L. T. Hobhouse expresses himself in 
the July, 1921, issue of The Sociological Review (p. 125) : “The ques¬ 
tion of the survival of civilization, which month by month becomes 
more doubtful and more urgent, does not depend upon political insti¬ 
tutions alone. Fundamentally, it is a question of the available 
amount of moral wisdom in mankind.” 

One must add that the Treaty of Versailles and the lack of concern 
shown by the United States and the Allies for the rehabilitation of 
Russia and Germany are further grounds for apprehension. On the 
other hand, the seeming success of the Conference on the Limitation 
of Armament at Washington is ground for hope. Even if the Con¬ 
ference is successful, however, it is well to remember that it is “only 
the first motion toward the first step toward real disarmament.” 


OUK SEMI-PAGAN CIVILIZATION 117 


the sinister forces readily and easily combined, until their 
power much overmatched the forces which made for peace, 
good will, and solidarity among men. The result was the 
long swing back toward barbarism among the nations of 
Christendom which finally became visible in the Great 
War, and in the breaking out of civil strife between 
classes in some nations. 

Now this recrudescence of barbarism shows conclusively 
enough that our civilization can no longer remain half 
pagan and half Christian. It must soon become one or the 
other. We have come to the parting of the ways. Unless the 
world becomes speedily Christian, it is bound to become 
speedily pagan. We cannot tolerate pagan standards in 
business, in politics, in education, in art, literature and 
science without coming to repudiate the Christian ideal 
of life altogether. The half-and-half standards of our 
previous civilization will no longer work in the complex 
and tremendously dynamic social world of the present. 
If it be said that our civilization has always been half 
pagan and half Christian and that it will doubtless con¬ 
tinue to be so, it must be said in reply that the events 
of the last few years and our present situation show that 
it cannot remain so. “Nothing can prevent mankind,” 
says a thoughtful writer, “from sinking beneath the tre¬ 
mendous temptations due to modern wealth and power 
save the creation of a strong religious life which shall 
lead us to consecrate our control over nature to the process 
of bringing in the Kingdom of God.” 1 Modern physical 
science has now put such terrible agencies of destruction 
in the hands of man that good will is needed as never 
before if men are not mutually to destroy one another. 
We dare no longer live together upon the old basis of a 

1 G. B. Smith, Social Idealism and the Changing Theology, p. 153. 


118 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


balance of power and of selfish interests. In the next 
war, we are told by experts, tanks as large as battleships 
will crush out our cities, while poison gases will stifle 
whole communities within a few hours. Mankind must 
end war or war will end civilization. 1 

Yet war cannot come to an end until men get rid of 
their illusions that classes or nations can live together in 
peace without good will and justice. Only the restoration 
of the ideals of good will, justice, and brotherhood within 
nations, moreover, can prevent the breaking out of inter¬ 
minable civil strife among classes, such as Russia has 
presented to our gaze. Just as within the American union, 
therefore, there came a time when the nation could no 
longer exist half slave and half free, so in Western civili¬ 
zation the time has arrived when we can no longer remain 
half pagan and half Christian. Either we must proceed 
to develop our civilization speedily along the lines of the 
pattern ideas of justice, brotherhood, and good will of the 
Christianity of the Gospels, or the world will go back to 
barbarism. All other ideals of life have been tried and 
have failed. 

There is need, therefore, at the present moment of a 
stalwart religion, a Christianity which shall bend its 
energies to making our whole civilization conform to the 
Christian ideal of life. Such a Christianity must be 
necessarily non-theological, because theology remains a 
realm of speculation and of disputation and divides rather 
than unites men. Such a Christianity must be thoroughly 
social; it must consider none of the great fields of the 
social activity of mankind alien to its interest. Such a 
Christianity must base itself upon the facts of life, and 
ally itself with humanitarian science. 

1 See Irwin, The Next War. An Appeal to Common Sense. 


CHAPTER V 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

The fourth thing needed for the reconstruction of re¬ 
ligion, so that it shall be adapted to the requirements of 
modern life, is that religion he based upon facts and so 
brought into harmony with positive science. As we have 
already pointed out, the outstanding and dominating thing 
in modern civilization is science. Much of the science 
of the present, however, is partial, incomplete, and not 
based upon facts, not at least upon all of the facts. When 
we speak of a positive religion which shall harmonize 
with positive science we mean a religion which is based 
not upon a few of the facts of man’s life—say, the phys¬ 
ical—but upon all of the facts. A religion which has 
respect to all the facts of the total life of mankind will be 
in harmony with the spirit of true science. When we 
have a religion which is truly positive and a science which 
is the same, there will be no longer any need of recon¬ 
ciling the two. The former will he simply the projection 
and universalization of the values found in the latter. 

The word “positive” we use in the same sense as used 
by Comte and by modern science in general, meaning, 
“founded upon fact,” not upon mere opinions or specula¬ 
tion. A positive religion, therefore, means one based 
upon experience, upon objective realities. It means, ac¬ 
cordingly, something socially constructive, and affirmative 
rather than merely negative. It is not a religion of nega¬ 
tions or of mere prohibitions, but is practical, dealing 
with the actual facts of human life and experience as it 

119 


120 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


finds them. It is not a religion of doubts, accordingly, 
but of affirmations. It is, in short, a religion of sanity, 
insisting that man shall build his faith in his world and 
his ideal of life, his universal values, upon all the facts 
of his experience. And it insists that this experience is 
a social experience and that his ideal must, accordingly, 
be a social ideal, his values, social values. 

Christianity if it is to survive must become a positive 
religion in the sense just indicated. It must pass out of 
the theological and speculative stage into the positive and 
social stage. It must be purged of its mythological ele¬ 
ments. When Comte in the later years of his life came 
to appreciate the importance of religion in the social life 
of man, seeing that social reconstruction was impossible 
without enlisting on its side man’s emotions, instincts, and 
will, that is, impossible without the essentially religious 
attitude of mind, he proposed a “Religion of Humanity.” 
The religion which Comte established was essentially 
Christianity minus its theology. Comte accepted without 
qualification the essential ethics of Christianity. The 
highest command of his new religion was to be the law 
of service—“live for others’’—which, as he himself rec¬ 
ognized, was manifestly but stating in modern vernacular 
the Christian law of service. It is strange, indeed, that 
Comte did not perceive that the Christianity of the Gos¬ 
pels was in accord with the Religion of Humanity which 
he sought to set up. But Christianity in Comte’s mind 
was synonymous with the ecclesiastical and theological 
systems of his day, and it was, accordingly, impossible 
for him to see in Christianity the Religion of Humanity 
which he sought. He was unable to conceive that Chris¬ 
tianity itself might enter into the positive stage and be¬ 
come a real Religion of Humanity. 



POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


121 


Comte’s Religion of Humanity failed to take root and 
is now all but extinct. But organized Christianity, in the 
countries where it has had the freest development, in con¬ 
tact with the social life on the one hand, and science and 
facts on the other, has steadily progressed toward the 
positive stage. It has more and more unfolded its latent 
capacities to become that true religion of humanity which 
Comte saw to be necessary to bring about any real and 
lasting social progress. As evidence of the progress of 
present Christianity toward the positive and humanitarian 
stage of development, the comments of two European-born 
observers on the development of religion in the United 
States are interesting. Says Henry Bargy in his La 
Religion dans la Societe aux Etats-Unis : 1 

“As dogma has never seemed to Americans the vital 
part of religion, so has agreement upon dogma never 
seemed to them the condition of moral unity; they think 
that people may have the same country without having the 
same theology. They make fraternity, the actual form of 
which is social solidarity, the essence of Christianity. 
The moral unity for which they strive under the name of 
Christian unity is only the co-operation of all for the in¬ 
creased establishment of fraternity and solidarity. High 
above sects whose diversity seems a matter of indifference 
to them they organize a religion which pervades society 
throughout its length and breadth, and tends toward being 
only a social spirit touched by the evangelical feeling. At 
the time of the Puritans it was a religion of race, as it 
had been with the Hebrews a religion of tribe; in pro¬ 
portion as the conception of the race enlarges so as to 

ipp. XVI-XVIII. This book, though it presents inspiring ideals 
rather than a careful survey, deserves translation into English (Li- 
brairie Armand Colin, Paris, 1902.) 


122 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

extend to the entire human race, it becomes a religion of 
humanity. All the groups from all the points of thought 
find a basis of unity in the homage paid to human virtue 
and human progress. Positivism has consummated the 
moral unity of the nation. . . . 

“This moral unity is indeed a religions unity and a 
Christian unity; this positivism is a Christian positivism, 
American humanism has received from Christianity all 
the traditional, sentimental, and poetical elements which 
distinguish a religion from a philosophy. American posi¬ 
tivism is only a Christianity which has evolved. As the 
first colonists, in their zeal, had made God the servitor 
of their new-born society, and placed religion at the 
service of the ideal humanity which they believed them¬ 
selves to be organizing, contemporary humanitarian phi¬ 
losophy has encountered nothing contrary to it in the 
churches of the United States; it has made use of them 
as frames all ready for it to take form in. The American 
religion may be called a Christian positivism, or a posi¬ 
tive Christianity. It has received from the past the tra¬ 
ditional and the evangelical spirit. Traditional, it pre¬ 
serves the names and the forms of the churches even when 
it changes their customs; it develops them from within. 
Evangelical, it keeps the figure of Christ before all, even 
when it does not recognize his divinity. American posi¬ 
tivism, so akin to that of Auguste Comte that Channing, 
after 1830, looked to France for the religion of the future, 
is distinguished for its religious character, and is con¬ 
ciliatory, not combative. In their tolerance for the past, 
from which they disengage the future, Americans deserve 
the title ‘positivist’ more than did Comte, since they not 
only neglect the discussion of metaphysics, but ignore 
them. While the disciples of Comte have been able to 
produce only a parody of religion, American positivism 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


123 


has its temples, clergy, followers, which are no other than 
those of Christian churches. One may conceive a posi¬ 
tivism with a God, as one may conceive a republic with a 
king; it is sufficient that the king be the servant of the 
people, and God, that of humanity.” 

In a similar spirit a former student of the author, writ¬ 
ing of the American church from the point of view of 
the Jewish immigrant, says: 

“I had expected mysticism and had found common 
sense. In my half knowledge of the church on the one 
hand and the American ideal on the other, I had looked 
for another of those hypocritical exhibitions of which I 
had seen many in my native country, where men prac¬ 
tised one thing and pretended belief in the opposite. I 
had looked for humbug and had found the most perfect 
honesty. I had looked for self contradictions, for solemn 
professions of faith in far-away impracticable abstrac¬ 
tions, for pretenses of submission to an ideal of humility 
and non-resistance and supineness, and I had found what ? 
A clear-eyed, level-headed, sane body of principles such 
as a practical modern man could believe in. I had stum¬ 
bled upon a discovery. For the first time in human his¬ 
tory, as far as I knew, a people had evolved a creed that 
was in harmony with their lives and with their ambi¬ 
tions. . . . 

“The American religion, I saw, was a vital, practical 
religion. If it was ethical, it was concretely so, and cared 
nothing about the philosophical abstractions underlying 
good and evil. It asked people to be good in order that 
the good they craved might come to them. ...” 1 

These generous comments of disinterested observers of 

1 M. E. Ravage in The Century, January, 1918. 


124 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


our religious life are, however, more favorable than the 
facts altogether warrant. If the picture were entirely 
true, there would be no need of this book. There is still, 
even in the United States, much religion of the narrow, 
ecclesiastical, and theological type, unadapted to the re¬ 
quirements of modern life; and in Western civilization, 
as a whole, organized Christianity is very far indeed from 
the socialized and positive type. While a humanized and 
socialized Christianity has been gradually rising during 
the last generation among the leading nations of Europe 
and America, organized Christianity, as yet, is only be¬ 
ginning to enter upon the positive stage. It is our pur¬ 
pose to show how the development in this direction can 
be hastened, how Christianity may become such a religion 
of humanity as will subordinate the socially negative ele¬ 
ments in our culture and establish humanitarian civiliza¬ 
tion upon a firm basis. 

A word of caution is necessary here. Positive religion 
does not imply the agnostic and negative attitude which 
Comte maintained toward many of the essential elements 
in religious life. These agnostic and negative elements 
in Comte’s teachings were the outcome of the spirit of 
his age and of his particular environment, rather than 
any necessary result of a positive, objective, scientific at¬ 
titude toward religion. Absolute agnosticism, or a nega¬ 
tive attitude toward ultimate reality which must be the 
supreme object of religion, so far from being consistent 
with the positive and scientific attitude of mind, is wholly 
inconsistent with it. 1 Comte, in other words, made the 
great mistake of thinking that religion could be an en¬ 
tirely subjective affair, and that man might take a nega- 

1 The positive attitude in science and philosophy implies, not a 
subjectivism, as some critics have mistakenly maintained, but rather 
a critical realism. 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


125 


tive attitude toward his universe but retain a positive at¬ 
titude toward himself and his own destiny. This, as 
Caird has pointed out in his criticism of Comte, 1 was un¬ 
doubtedly a contradiction in terms. A purely subjective 
religion is an absurdity. 2 Such a religion would be very 
far from a positive religion, a religion based upon all of 
the facts of human experience. No such subjective re¬ 
ligion is here proposed. Rather our aim will be to show 
that a social and positive Christianity, will be a Chris¬ 
tianity robbed of none of its essential elements, though 
reduced to its purest form; and that such a Christianity 
is the only religion which will meet the needs of the mod¬ 
ern world. 

Yet another word of caution is needed on the other side. 
While Comte was wrong in his subjectivism and agnosti¬ 
cism, yet all must admit that he was essentially right in 
saying that it is psychologically impossible for man to 
worship anything hut the highest and best which he finds 
in himself. Religion, in other words, as we have already 
pointed out, must draw all of its values from the social 
life of man, for psychologically it has no other source 
from which to draw them. This is wholly the case with 
Christianity. Its doctrines of the divine fatherhood, of 
human brotherhood, of love, of service, of self-sacrifice 
for the sake of service, are all manifestly drawn from 
the higher experiences and values of social life. 3 What 
man must worship, therefore, in religion as Comte in¬ 
sisted, are those ideals of character and conduct, of per¬ 
sonality and society, which he has gotten from his social 

1 The Social Philosophy of Comte, especially pp. 163-170. 

a The religious consciousness, as has often been pointed out, de¬ 
mands objectivity quite as much as the scientific consciousness. 

• See Chapter II, pp. 39-42. 


126 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

life. But these ideals cannot be worshipped as abstract, 
subjective values; they must be projected into the uni¬ 
verse and found embodied in concrete living personalities. 
Religion is undermined, for reasons which we shall soon 
see, whenever this projection and universalization of social 
values is denied to the religious attitude of mind. The 
negative attitude toward life and the universe which we 
find often in materialistic speculation and in agnostic 
opinion is necessarily deadly to religion. Religion has a 
right to attack, in the name of humanity, such subjective 
metaphysics and socially negative doctrines which some¬ 
times masquerade under the name of science; and in doing 
so religion performs a real service to science, because such 
doctrines are not only unproved, but are not in accord 
with what are the seeming facts of human experience. 
But positive religion does not deny that it derives its con¬ 
cepts and values from human experience, even though it 
projects and universalizes them. Thus it escapes from 
negative metaphysics on the one hand and from any at¬ 
tempt to erect a metaphysical system on the other hand. 
It simply bases itself upon the facts and needs of man’s 
social life, universalizing social values so that they will 
come to individual consciousness in the intensest way and 
thus aid in making the more difficult adjustments re¬ 
quired of the individual in his social relationships. 

The general attitude of positive religion is, then, no 
different from positive science, except that it carries the 
process of universalization a step further on the side of 
human values. Its attitude is the frank, open-minded 
attitude of a progressive social idealism, that of a learner 
rather than that of a dogmatist. It is not on the defen¬ 
sive as regards positive science, a science based on facts 
rather than on speculations. The truths of science, if 
they are truths, positive religion holds will do religion 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


m 


good rather than harm in the long run. Indeed, they will 
be the very means by which religious ends of the right 
sort can be realized. For a truly positive science will 
also take into full account all of the facts and needs of 
man’s life. It will also be humanitarian, not less than 
positive religion, and between humanitarian science and 
humanitarian religion there can be no conflict. Both will 
join hands for the conquest of nature and the redemption 
of humanity. 

What then will be the distinguishing features of Chris¬ 
tianity when it has reached the positive stage of develop¬ 
ment ? In brief, it will become “transfused with the 
spirit and transformed by the method of modern science.” 
But what does this mean ? It means first of all that posi¬ 
tive Christianity will subordinate theological and meta¬ 
physical questions. This does not mean that it will take 
a wholly negative attitude, as we have already said, to¬ 
ward these constructions of the human intellect. Both are 
doubtless necessary rational disciplines, necessary intel¬ 
lectual tasks which the human mind must essay from time 
to time as it sees its fund of knowledge growing upon 
which to base inferences in regard to ultimate reality. 1 
But positive Christianity will not stress the theological 
side of religion as the vital thing in the religious life; 
rather it will minimize it. The world is rapidly learn¬ 
ing that it can get along very well with a much smaller 
minimum of theology than it had formerly supposed, and 
perhaps it will soon discover that what is regarded at the 
present time as the minimum may be still further re- 

1 For a recent attempt at a rational theology which dodges none of 
the issues involved and which recognizes frankly the results of modern 
science, see Professor E. W. Lyman’s book. The Experience of Ood in 
Modem Life. 


128 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


duced. We shall try to point out later what appears to 
be the requisite minimum of theological beliefs necessary 
even in a positive Christianity. 

The second characteristic of positive Christianity is 
that it will be concretely ethical. It will be social, in 
other words, rather than theological. It will throw the 
emphasis in religion where Jesus threw it, upon the rela¬ 
tions of men to one another, rather than upon theological 
doctrine. 1 It will insist, as Jesus insisted, that religion 
and morality are not separable. Religion, as the right 
attitude toward universal reality, includes morality, the 
right attitude toward man. Religion is simply morality 
raised to its highest power, or universalized morality, 
while morality in the common acceptance of the term 
should be religion brought down to the practical, every 
day relations between men. This practical identification 
of religion and ethics will be a chief feature of socialized 
or positive Christianity, for as soon as ethics is allowed 
to become divorced from religion, as we have seen, it 
ceases to have power over the springs of character and con¬ 
duct in the mass of individuals. The social efficiency and 
strength of any religion has always been directly propor¬ 
tional to its power to enlist the religious nature of man 
upon the side of ethical ideals. This has always been the 
peculiar strength of historical Christianity in its periods 
of highest development. The subordination of theological 
questions to ethical questions in the teachings of Jesus 
was not an accident. It was rather the mark of the high¬ 
est possible evolution of religion. In this respect as in 
others positive Christianity will be in a sense a return to 
the religion of Jesus. 


1 It is said upon good authority that a single page will hold all 
that Jesus said upon such subjects as the soul, death, immortality, 
and eternity. 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


129 


A third characteristic of positive Christianity is that 
it will be collective rather than individualistic. It will 
emphasize the relations of men to one another in their 
concrete social life, the redeemed community, the re¬ 
deemed world, the kingdom of God upon earth, rather 
than the redemption of individual souls. An ethical 
Christianity must necessarily make the community, in¬ 
deed, as much its concern as the individual, since the con¬ 
ditions of the community surely determine in greater or 
less degree the individual life. The world is the subject 
of redemption for positive Christianity. There is every 
warrant for believing that this was the attitude of Jesus. 
The kingdom of God which he announced he had come to 
establish is essentially a social conception, meaning an 
order of human society. 1 

This does not mean, of course, that the individual is 
to he neglected by positive Christianity. On the contrary, 
a redeemed society presupposes redeemed individuals. As 
humanity is not something apart from individuals, it can 
only be saved through saving individuals. But positive 
Christianity will recognize that man leads a collective life 
and that the conditions of that life make or mar the char¬ 
acter of individuals. Individualistic methods of helping 
individuals will be preserved by positive Christianity, for 
they are indispensable in any right social life. It is the 
humane, the brotherly touch which does most to help under 
all conditions. Christianity can never neglect the per¬ 
sonal work of individuals for individuals; hut as it be¬ 
comes more positive, it will see that the larger economic, 
political, and cultural conditions even more need to he 
controlled if the world is to he redeemed, to he made safe 

1 This is not to deny, of course, that this expression also implied 
an inner, subjective, personal state. As a spiritual conception, it 
necessarily had both its personal and social sides. See further dis¬ 
cussion on page 178. 


130 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


for Christian living. While on the one hand positive 
Christianity will reaffirm the preciousness of every indi¬ 
vidual soul, the idea that every individual should be re¬ 
garded as an end in himself, it will lay its chief emphasis 
upon the need of creating an ideal human society, a king¬ 
dom of God upon earth. 

A fourth characteristic of positive Christianity is that 
it will be active toward all human things rather than 
merely contemplative. A Christianity which is mere be¬ 
lief or faith cannot possibly be regarded as positive Chris¬ 
tianity. If religion is to he ethical and social in char¬ 
acter it must also he active. Positive Christianity must 
be in a very true sense a militant movement, directed 
against all the forces that oppress and degrade men. It 
is the moral substitute for war. It can have no patience 
with the idea that there is anything not subject to the 
Christian ideal of life. Positive Christianity is distinctly, 
therefore, a radical, even a revolutionary movement, not 
in the sense, of course, that it will rely upon force, or 
that it hopes to usher in the millennium by some sudden 
transformation of the social order. But it is revolu¬ 
tionary in its ideal of life, and it must be aggressive in 
its methods of dealing with evils that beset our social 
life. Positive Christianity can he no milk and water 
affair. Just as Jesus did not contemplate that love might 
mean merely a passive good will, so positive Christianity 
will insist that the fruit of the Christian ideal is aggres¬ 
sive effort to suppress the evil forces in our civilization, 
and to establish a society in which the ideals of justice, of 
fraternity, and of mutual service are realized. 

It follows from this that a fifth characteristic of posi¬ 
tive Christianity is that it will be constructive and affirma¬ 
tive rather than merely negative. It will not be so much 
a series of prohibitions as a definite positive program for 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


131 


both individual and social life. It may have at times to 
destroy in order to make a place for the good, but it will 
destroy only for the sake of upbuilding something posi¬ 
tive. It will seek to replace the negative ethics of bar¬ 
barism and of early civilization by a constructive program 
of social betterment. This again represents the attitude 
of Jesus. The negative attitude of the Old Testament he 
replaced by the positive, constructive social morality of 
the New. Positive Christianity cannot be an affair of 
“taboos.” 

The sixth characteristic of positive Christianity is that 
it will be co-operative in its spirit. It will recognize the 
fundamental sociological truth that ten men working to¬ 
gether can accomplish what one hundred cannot accom¬ 
plish working separately. It will believe in organized 
effort rather than in merely individualistic right living. 
The church, therefore, in positive Christianity must take 
a place of commanding importance, not as an end in itself, 
but as an indispensable means for realizing the ends 
of a social Christianity. The church, as the organized 
followers of Jesus’ teaching, must enlist the enthusiastic 
service and loyalty of all who believe in the Christian 
ideal of life. This in no way places the church above 
criticism, but on the contrary renders it liable to the most 
searching criticism as to its efficiency as an instrument 
for the establishment among men of the Christian ideal. 
The church must he regarded strictly as a means, not as 
an end. Nevertheless, the idea of following the teachings 
of Jesus in secret and without the fullest co-operation with 
all those who believe in those teachings, is repugnant to 
the idea of a social and positive Christianity. Religion 
cannot he a private, individualistic affair if it is social and 
scientific. It will not hide itself, but will undertake 


132 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


through organized effort along every fruitful line of en¬ 
deavor the redemption of mankind. 

But what shall he the attitude of positive Christianity 
toward the essential beliefs of all higher religions, the 
belief in God, the belief in immortality, and the belief in 
the reality of sin and of salvation from sin ? The reply 
is that a positive Christianity will reaffirm these beliefs 
as a part of the universal religious consciousness of man¬ 
kind. They are not the peculiar beliefs of Christianity, 
but all higher religions have these beliefs in some form. 
What form will they take, then, in positive Christianity ? 
Will positive Christianity, like Comte, accept as its Su¬ 
preme Being, humanity itself ? 

As we have already pointed out, no religion can he 
subjective and at the same time positive; and to find in 
humanity the supreme reality, into harmony with which 
man must seek to come, is a species of subjectivism. 1 It, 


1 Such religious subjectivism characterizes not only the Comtean 
positivists, but also the extreme pragmatists and some other schools 
at the present time. Thus Dr. A. E. Haydon in an article on “The 
Theological Trend of Pragmatism” ( American Journal of Theology, 
October, 1019, p. 408) says: “Religion becomes enthusiasm for social 
ideals. . . . Religion will still persist. ... Its cult will be the web 
of civilization.” So also Mr. H. G. Wells in Ood, the Invisible King 
(p. 61) : “He is the undying human memory, the increasing human 
will.” Dr. G. Stanley Hall also declares (Morale, the Supreme 
Standard of Life and Conduct, p. 354) : “Belief in God . . . must be 
subjectified.” But many of these subjectivists in religion do not 
hold consistently to their subjectivism. Thus Dr. Hall says (op. cit. 
p. 356) : “The supreme object of worship and service is the power, 
that in the beginning started the course of evolution and in the end 
became the power that makes for righteousness.” Even Dr. Haydon 
in a later article (Journal of Religion, Vol. I, p. 196) speaks of 
religion as “just the way we orient ourselves to cosmic realities in the 
interests of our larger life.” We safely conclude with Professor 
Brightman ( Journal of Religion, Vol. I, p. 366) that “the need for 
objectivity is at the basis of science, philosophy, and religion.” For 
further discussion, see the articles by Professors Ames and Hocking 
in the September, 1921, Journal of Religion (Vol. I, pp. 462-496). 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


133 


indeed, denies the very purpose of religion, which is har¬ 
monious adaptation to all of the conditions of human life. 
To say that humanity is the sole object of religious ven¬ 
eration, worship, and love is like saying that humanity 
needs merely to adapt itself to itself. It divorces religion 
absolutely from science. Our religion cannot teach one 
thing and our science another; and if there is anything 
which modern science clearly teaches, it is that man is a 
part of nature, a part of a system of things immensely 
transcending himself, which has produced him and made 
possible all of his works. Man does not cease to stand 
in the midst of nature because he is, as an individual, the 
product largely of his civilization. The religious con¬ 
sciousness no more than the scientific consciousness can 
stop with man and his works. In a certain sense, man is 
incurably a nature worshipper; that is, his reverence, his 
affection, his valuations rise from man to the ultimate 
reality which lies behind both man and physical nature. 
This is the logical as well as the instinctive thing for man 
to do; for if religion is an organ of adaptation, it must 
have reference both to man and to the universe in which 
he lives, moves, and has his being. 1 

Indeed, in a certain sense, the universe must always loom 
larger in the religious consciousness than man, just as it 
does in the scientific consciousness. Not the self-sufficiency 

1 “In naturalistic thought,” said the late Professor Bowne, “nature 
is the rival of God. Nature does a great many things and God does 
the rest. Traditional religious thought has shared the same view, and 
thus nature was continually threatening to displace God. God was 
not to be appealed to until nature had been shown to be inadequate. 
Hence the dismay in popular religious thought at each new extension 
of the realm of law, every such extension being regarded as subtracted 
from the control of God. But this dismay vanishes entirely when it 
is seen that God is the ‘Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all 
things proceed’; or that, in Pauline phrase, ‘in Him we live and 
move and have our being.’ Now, nature is no rival of God, but the 
form of his manifestation ,”—Hibbert Journal , July, 1910, p. 888. 


134 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

of man, but the sufficiency of God is the real basis of re¬ 
ligion. Religion demands a reality beyond man, to which 
not only the religious consciousness functions as a means 
of adjustment, but whose law and order compels adjust¬ 
ment. It demands a universe of law, not less than science 
does, a universe whose processes bring the foolishness and 
wickedness of men to naught. Where science, however, 
sees only the laws of physical necessity, religion sees a 
moral order, to which the life of man must conform itself, 
if it is to be in harmony with the infinite. 

To be sure, the superficial scientific thinking of the 
nineteenth century often went out of its way to deny that 
there were any moral implications in the law and order 
of the universe. It pointed to the flood, to the earth¬ 
quake, to the tornado, to the struggle for existence, as 
proof positive of the non-morality of nature and of the 
power which lies behind physical nature. Such views 
were, of course, based upon the assumption that the moral 
is synonymous with the pleasant and the agreeable. To 
such thinking there was no place for religion as a means 
of adapting man to the conditions of his life, of putting 
him in harmony with his universe. The moral according 
to this view is something not to be learned by careful 
thinking, but was immediately known by the subjective 
reactions of experience. 

Such views of religion and morality are, of course, not 
in keeping with the conclusions of scientific research; and 
along with such views must vanish our conception of a 
non-moral universe. 1 The moral order to which human 

1 Says Conklin (The Direction of Human Evolution, p. 228) : “The 
possibilities are almost infinity to one against the conclusion that the 
order of nature, the fitness of environment, and the course of pro¬ 
gressive evolution with all its marvellous adaptations are all the 
results of blind chance. ... In short, science reveals to us a universe 
of ends as well as of means, of teleology as well as of mechanism, 
and in this it agrees with the teachings of philosophy and religion.” 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


135 


living must conform is after all but a segment of the cos¬ 
mic order. The laws of human living together are no less 
a part of the laws of the universe than the laws of physics 
or chemistry. And these laws of human living together, 
or rathei the perception of them, is what gives rise to 
human morality. The assumption of all sane religious 
thinking must he, accordingly, that “only man is vile/’ 1 
Otherwise, indeed, a redemptive religion would he the 
most useless thing in the world. If the universe is “vile,” 
there is little need of a religious consciousness in man to 
adjust himself to it. 

Without destroying religion, man cannot, then, believe 
that the universe is a “fool’s house” which will bring his 
highest aspirations and his best endeavors to naught. 
Man must believe that there is a meaning in existence and 
in the system of things, and that that meaning, while he 
cannot fully comprehend it, yet in part he does appre¬ 
hend. He must believe that the universe is not alien to 
himself, if he is to have any basis upon which to adjust 
himself to life and to the ultimate reality which sur¬ 
rounds him. Nor does science in any way contradict or 
refute this reasonable faith. Science itself shows that 
man is a product of the universe, and to ask any one to 
believe that the universe is absolutely different from man 
is to deny that principle of continuity upon which science 
builds itself. If there is a spiritual element in man, it 
cannot have come out of nothing; neither can it be 
greater in man than in the universe, for that would be 

1 The philosophy of the eighteenth century was wont to debate the 
question whether this was “the best of all possible worlds.” From 
the hedonistic standpoint the debate was idle. But if the universe be 
judged as we have now learned to judge human institutions—from 
their educative effect upon the individual and the race—then some¬ 
thing might still be said in favor of the affirmative. 


136 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


equivalent to saying that man is greater than the uni¬ 
verse. 

The negations of philosophical materialism are not, 
therefore, supported by the spirit and tendencies of mod¬ 
ern science. While science may he far from offering the 
full measure of support to man’s religious life which we 
may wish, yet it is very far from destroying a reasonable 
faith in the system of things. On the contrary, in its 
investigations of nature it is coming slowly but surely to 
the perception of a Creative Evolution, which is imminent 
in all the processes of nature. 1 It is coming, in other 
words, to recognize that from the standpoint of man there 
is an ascending energy in the universe; and this is, after 
all, the substance of all rational religious faith, that back 
of man and his works is an ultimate reality which makes 
human life, not an accident and meaningless in the scheme 
of things, but the supreme expression of an infinite 
reality. 2 Man’s projection of his values into the universe 
in his religious attitudes has, therefore, a rational as well 
as an emotional basis, and it is scarcely probable that any 
religion based upon science will deny this; for to deny it 
means to destroy that common sense which is the basis of 
both sound science and rational religion, and to plunge 


1 Says Professor Hobhouse in his remarkable work, Development 
and Purpose , which perhaps presents more cogently than any other 
book the modern scientific argument for theism, though it seems 
little known to most theologians: “It is submitted, not in the least as 
a matter of faith, but as a sound working hypothesis, that the evo¬ 
lutionary process can be best understood as the effect of a purpose 
slowly working itself out under limiting conditions.” (p. 24.) These 
“limiting conditions.” Professor Lyman points out rightly (op. cit. 
p. 130) are those inherent in the nature of a developmental process, 
not extraneous circumstances. 

2 “If a purpose runs through the world-whole, there is a Mind of 
which the world purpose is the object.”—Hobhouse (op. cit. p. 365). 
“If the world process is directed toward harmony, we legitimately 
infer a Mind at its center.”—Hobhouse, The Rational Good, p. 230. 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 137 

into the confusions and absurdities of an absolute agnos¬ 
ticism. 

But from another point of view one may say, with equal 
truth, that humanity looms larger in a rational religious 
consciousness than the universe at large. This is because 
man is the highest expression of the universe, and just as 
it would be insane on the part of science to try to under¬ 
stand the universe without taking man into account, so it 
would be insane on the part of religion to try to get a 
valuation of the universal reality without getting that 
valuation primarily through man. For man must ever be 
to both science and religion the highest revelation of the 
nature of the supreme reality. Indeed, in the practical 
religious consciousness it is the human element which 
plays the chief part; and this becomes increasingly so as 
religion becomes more ethical and social. It may be pos¬ 
sible to have a dehumanized science which takes account 
of nothing except physical nature; but it is scarcely pos¬ 
sible to have any longer a dehumanized religion. In this 
respect religion is more evolved than science. And it is 
characteristic of Christianity in particular that it throws 
its emphasis upon the human in religion rather than upon 
the non-human. It finds its revelation of the divine in 
the highest human. It finds, in other words, God in man, 
without denying, however, that God is in nature also. 1 
It is the peculiar merit, then, of Christianity that it makes 
no dualism in the religious consciousness, by setting man 
off as something apart from the rest of the universe. It 
synthetizes objective and subjective religion. It reconciles 
the human and the cosmic, by finding the divine in both. 

1 Says Dr. John Haynes Holmes (in Unity, January 13, 1921): 
“God is identified with humanity just as he is identified with nature; 
but he is also something more and infinitely greater than either of 
these worlds.” This is precisely the doctrine of Christian theism. 


138 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


But the divine in man is not so much realized as some' 
thing to be realized. It, thus, puts religion in the service 
of human evolution, and sets up a religion of humanity 
without destroying the religious attitude toward nature 
and the ultimate reality which lies behind nature . It 
makes religion primarily a means of human and social 
adjustment without making such adjustment a mere sub¬ 
jective matter within humanity or an adjustment to an 
ultimate negation. 

Thus, positive Christianity has room for a very decided 
and positive belief in God, a God who manifests himself 
in nature, not only as creative evolution, hut in human 
nature and in human society as the spirit leading towards 
all truth, all rightness, and all brotherhood. Indeed, one 
must say, with the French author whom we quoted at the 
beginning of this chapter, that not only “one may conceive 
a positivism with a God,” but that one can conceive a 
truly positive religion in no other way. But the concep¬ 
tion of God which positive religion arrives at is very dif¬ 
ferent from many of the vagaries of speculative theology. 
It is more nearly in accord with the conception of God 
which Jesus held. When we turn to that conception in 
the pages of the first three Gospels, we find that it is the 
simple doctrine of the fatherhood of God. God, the ulti¬ 
mate reality, which has produced man and which is lead¬ 
ing us upward and onward toward a better life with our 
fellows, toward a fuller realization of his will, stands in 
relation to us, according to Jesus, even as a loving father 
stands in relation to his children. Thus again, positive 
Christianity marks a return to the simplicity and humane¬ 
ness of the thought of Jesus. Instead of fine-spun theo¬ 
logical dogmas concerning God, it presents the simple 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


139 


faith that the creative force of the universe stands in a 
fatherly relation to us. 1 

Positive Christianity will be characterized, then, by a 
positive and unequivocal belief in the reign of God, in 
a moral order permeating the universe to which men must 
conform if they are to be successful in their living to¬ 
gether. Just as men under a positive and scientific con¬ 
ception of nature know that in order to build bridges or 
sail ships successfully, they must understand and conform 
to the laws of physical nature, so under a positive con¬ 
ception of God men will know that in order to live rightly 
and happily, they must understand and conform to the 
laws of harmonious and successful living together. Thus 
will positive Christianity replace arbitrary and mytho¬ 
logical conceptions of God by a conception which is at 
once moral and in conformity to the facts of experience. 
The “Santa Claus conception of God,” as a mysterious 
being who interferes with the ordinary course of nature 
to bestow special favors on those who seek to please him, 
will be replaced by the conception of a universal moral 
reality which permeates all existence, both physical and 
social, and which is the creator and preserver of all the 
good that man has known or can know. 2 3 The autocratic 
conception of God, as a force outside of the universe who 
rules by arbitrary will both physical nature and human 
history, will be replaced by the conception of a spirit im¬ 
minent in nature and in humanity which is gradually 

1 Compare the statement of Hobhouse (The Rational Good, p. 227): 
“Reality is an interconnected system which develops in time, the 

f nrinciple of rational harmony or love being the permanent under- 
ying ground of development.” 

3 As we have already pointed out (p. 124), the soundest religious 
tradition has never attributed the evils or maladjustments of human 
life to God. Says Professor Hobhouse: “It is an error of the 
religious mind to identify Reality as a whole (i. e., both good and 
evil) with God.” (op. cit. p. 229.) 


140 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


working out the supreme good in the form of an ideal 
society consisting of all humanity. The materialistic con¬ 
ception of God, if we may so call it, as a universe of 
meaningless play of energy, alien to the aspirations of 
man, will be replaced by a conception of God as realizing 
himself in the intelligence, welfare, and fraternity of all 
humanity. This is the God, as a modern religious thinker 
has happily said, “who strives within our striving, who 
kindles his flame in our intellect, sends the impact of his 
energy to make our will restless for righteousness, floods 
our subconscious mind with dreams and longings, and 
always urges the race on toward a higher combination of 
freedom and solidarity.” And, we may add, this is the 
God whom Jesus speaks of as a loving father. Such a 
human, personal, and social conception of God may seem 
inadequate to the scientific mind, but if it is inadequate, 
it is surely inadequate by way of defect and not by way 
of excess. 1 

So, likewise, will positive Christianity reaffirm the be¬ 
lief in immortality. Both sound science and rational 
religion forbid the belief that death ends all for human 
personality. Sociology and anthropology have united in 
showing the importance of the individual life, not only 
as a carrier of civilization, but as a modifier of civiliza¬ 
tion. It is individual lives which make up our human 
world, in other words, and these human lives, both phys¬ 
ically and culturally, enter into the enduring life of hu¬ 
manity. In his religion of humanity Comte made much 
of this subjective immortality of the individual, as he 

1 We need also to remember, as Professor Spaulding says (The New 
Rationalism, p. 517): “If God is personality, he is also more than 
personality, even as the moral situation among men is more than 
personality.” In the same spirit Hobhouse rightly speaks of God as 
“super-personal.” (op. cit. p. 228.) 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


141 


called it. According to him, all the good who have ever 
lived, live again in lives made possible and better because 
of their existence, while the bad are gradually but surely 
eliminated from the life of humanity. Since Comte, 
science has demonstrated this subjective immortality of 
the individual to be, we might almost say, an appalling 
fact—appalling because the elimination of bad influences 
is probably not so easy or so certain as Comte seemed to 
imply. 

But is this immortality of influence” the only im¬ 
mortality which positive Christianity will teach? No 
doubt the non-theologically minded Christian would in 
most cases at the present day be entirely satisfied if he 
could be sure that all the good which he tried to do would 
live on after him in the enduring life of humanity. The 
true Christian is not very much concerned about his per¬ 
sonal fate in a world beyond death if he has lived rightly 
in the present world. The selfishness of that peculiar 
type of Christian who foregoes pleasures in this world in 
order that he may selfishly enjoy them in another life of 
longer duration does not appeal to him, and he recognizes 
it as quite alien to the spirit of Jesus. Eor Jesus con¬ 
cerned himself but little with the question of existence 
after death. Jesus simply took for granted the principle 
of continuity in the spiritual world. “In my father’s 
house,” he says, “there are many rooms, and if it were 
not so, I would have told you.” 

Yet, the belief in personal immortality cannot be dis¬ 
missed by merely saying that the true Christian attitude 
in this matter is that of trust. A purely subjective im¬ 
mortality, such as Comte taught, is, after all, a contradic¬ 
tion in terms, and positive religion cannot remain satis¬ 
fied with such a statement as a complete and reasonable 
religious faith. The life of humanity, science plainly 


142 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


teaches, is a process limited in time. A subjective im¬ 
mortality is, therefore, an immortality limited by the life 
of the race; and this raises the much bigger problem 
whether the life of humanity is itself a meaningless 
process. For a process which begins in a blank and ends 
in a blank is surely meaningless. The whole conception, 
therefore, of a subjective immortality without an objec¬ 
tive correlate is antagonistic to a positive conception of the 
universe and of existence. The positive conception of 
God, which we have just stated, necessitates belief in 
immortality as an objective as well as a subjective fact. 
In what precise form this personal immortality is realized 
will not concern positive Christianity. No scientific 
demonstration of the existence of the soul after the death 
of the body is necessary for the purpose of positive Chris¬ 
tianity, and it will refuse to waste time in quest of proof 
of that which, if proved, would add nothing of value to 
the Christian life. Here again, then, positive Chris¬ 
tianity is in harmony with the scientific spirit. 

On the other hand, there is nothing in positive science 
which forbids a reasonable faith in personal immortality. 
Indeed, the evidence of positive science, so far as it has 
been able to get ascertained facts, seems to point to the 
conclusion that the principle of continuity reigns in the 
spiritual as well as in the physical realm; but no dog¬ 
matic conclusion has been reached by science, and this is, 
perhaps, well in the present stage of human development. 
The overemphasis upon personal immortality has fre¬ 
quently led to very unfortunate results in both religion and 
ethics. Positive Christianity here as elsewhere will not 
attempt to set up dogmas upon uncertain foundations. In 
this matter, it will be content to affirm that the facts of 
science are not such as in any way to undermine a reason¬ 
able faith. It will avoid such attempts as have often 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


143 


been made by the church to depict the exact form in which 
personal immortality will be realized—attempts which all 
sane minds now see must be regarded as horrible or ludi¬ 
crous caricatures of what a rational religious faith should 
be. Rather positive Christianity will, as we have already 
said, return in this matter to the simple, trustful, and 
affirmative attitude of Jesus, which is a sufficient founda¬ 
tion for the Christian life. 

The attitude of positive Christianity towards sin and 
salvation will be unequivocal. The theological conception 
of sin is that it is rebellion against God. To this state¬ 
ment there can be no objection, if we remember that the 
service of God must consist in the service of humanity; 
therefore, rebellion against God is disloyalty to humanity. 
In simplest terms, sin is essentially selfishness; it is dis¬ 
loyalty to the claims of humanity, whether that humanity 
be our fellow human beings around us or those in distant 
lands or future ages. The conception of sin in positive 
Christianity, in other words, will be social and humani¬ 
tarian. Sin will be the failure to recognize in all of one's 
fellow beings ends rather than mere means, or to act, as 
Kant said, so that the principle upon which one acts may 
be made into a universal law. But this is simply the 
Christianity of the Gospels. In this case again positive 
Christianity will mean a return to the simple teachings 
of Jesus. The elaborate definitions of sin formulated by 
the creeds of the church will be thrown into the discard; 
but sin will not become, on that account, a less direfully 
significant fact in the religious life. Because sin is dis¬ 
loyalty to humanity, makes it no less rebellion against God 
and robs it of none of its terror or degradation to the 
true Christian mind. 

The true Christian conception of salvation is that it is 


144 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


salvation from sin. This is the conception of the Gos¬ 
pels, but in the theological ages of the Christian church, 
salvation was often represented to mean, essentially, 
escape from punishment and assurance of bliss in a life 
beyond the grave. Thus, the whole conception of salva¬ 
tion was degraded to a refined sort of selfishness and other¬ 
worldliness. Positive Christianity will furnish a social 
conception of salvation in contrast to the medieval theo¬ 
logical notions which have prevailed down to the present. 
It will not deny that human souls may he lost and in 
torment on account of sin; for that would be to deny an 
obvious fact of moral and religious experience. But it 
will emphasize that salvation means, not only deliverance 
from sin, but entrance into the joy of a life of love, of 
service, and of right relations with one’s fellow men, and 
of a consequent right attitude toward God. It will point out 
that for the individual, salvation consists, essentially, in 
identifying himself with the highest aspirations and wel¬ 
fare of his race. Actively, salvation will reveal itself by 
participation in all those movements and activities which 
are designed to redeem humanity. For groups of indi¬ 
viduals, salvation will consist in accepting the spirit of 
Jesus, the spirit of seeking to serve God through the 
service of humanity. Such groups as the church and the 
family, and, possibly, also the state when it shall become 
Christian, are the necessary and natural media by which 
individuals are saved; and hence positive Christianity will 
preach a salvation for groups as well as for individuals. 
For ultimately it seeks a redeemed world not less than 
redeemed individuals. 

But it may be said that the crucial question has not 
yet been answered. What is the attitude of positive Chris¬ 
tianity toward Jesus ? Does it accept his claims, and is it 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


145 


in accord with the tradition of the Christian church ? The 
answer, again, is unequivocal. Positive Christianity will 
accept Jesus for what he claimed to be himself, especially 
as his words are reported in the first three Gospels; hut 
it will not accept what theologians have claimed him to 
he. Theological disputation, it is almost notorious, has 
obscured the simple and sublime figure of the Gospels. 1 
Scarcely any two theologians have agreed in regard to 
their claims as to Jesus, and certainly no two Christian 
sects. It is time surely that the Christian church should 
emphasize what Jesus said of himself, and not what men 
have said of him. The historical credibility of the main 
features of the Gospel story seem beyond reasonable 
doubt. 2 Indeed, the principles of sociology and anthro¬ 
pology are such that even though we had no supporting 
documents from the early Christian centuries, the credi¬ 
bility of the Gospel story could scarcely be doubted in the 
light of subsequent historical social developments—a point 
which some critics have often overlooked. Social move¬ 
ments do not originate without social leaders, and great 
historical movements which have profoundly affected 
civilization require personalities which bring to a focus, 
as it were, certain social tendencies, thus giving a new 
impetus and direction to social development. 

The principles of psychology also aid in giving cer¬ 
tainty to the essential truthfulness and historicity of the 
figure of Jesus. This has impressed practically all stu¬ 
dents who have brought an open mind to the question. 
If such sociological, psychological, and anthropological 

1 For example, see Schweitzer’s review of the work of the German 
theologians from Reimarus to Wrede in his The Quest of the His¬ 
torical Jesus. The results, as Schweitzer himself acknowledges, are 
mainly negative. 

1 Such credibility would surely never have been questioned had not 
the teaching of Jesus been involved in partisan disputation. 


146 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


principles be rejected, we are left without any positive 
science of human history and plunged into the absurdities 
of absolute historical skepticism. 1 

We may, therefore, accept the essential truth, even upon 
a purely scientific basis, of the account of Jesus’ teach¬ 
ings and life contained in the Gospels. Reasonable faith 
built upon these scientific principles will, of course, go 
much further and say that the burden of proof obviously 
rests upon those who would reject the account of Jesus’ 
teachings and life contained in the Gospels. 

What, then, did Jesus say concerning himself? What 
were the claims which he himself made upon his fol¬ 
lowers? That they were no inconsiderable claims the 
Gospel record, as well as the history of the Christian 
church, bears witness. Jesus was conscious in the highest 
degree of his world mission. He believed himself sent 
by God, not only to redeem his people, but all the nations 
of the earth. He proclaimed himself the Messiah fore¬ 
told by the Prophets, 2 sent to redeem Israel and establish 
God’s kingdom upon earth. He spoke of himself, how¬ 
ever, not so much as representing his own people as man¬ 
kind in general, namely as “the Son of Man”; 3 only 


1 The extreme to which such skepticism may go is also seen in the 

case of Buddha, whose historic existence has been doubted by one 
school of writers. Compare Glover, The Jesus of History, pp. 5-9. 

3 Some careful New Testament scholars think that Jesus never 
proclaimed himself as the Messiah. See Case, The Millennial Hope, 
p. 114 f. 

• This term has caused endless controversy among the critics. See 
articles in Encyclopedia Biblica (Vol. IV) and in Hastings Diction¬ 
ary of the Bible. While the term in Jewish apocalyptic writings was 
used as one of the titles of the Messiah, it is improbable that Jesus 
used it in this sense. As Bishop Westcott said: “It is inconceivable 
that the Lord should have adopted a title which was popularly held 
to be synonymous with that of the Messiah while he carefully avoided 
the title of Messiah itself.” In other words, it is improbable that 
Jesus used the term generally in the apocalyptic sense, but rather 
in the simpler sense the term had in the Aramaic which Jesus spoke, 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


147 


twice in the records of his ministry do we find him speak¬ 
ing of himself as representing God, namely as “the Son 
of God.” Nevertheless, he does not hesitate to say, on 
several occasions, many things which indicate clearly his 
sense of his mission as a redeemer of mankind. “I am 
the way, the truth, and the life,” he says. Again, “No 
man cometh to the Father except through me.” 1 

Now, we cannot possibly dismiss these hold claims 
which Jesus made for himself even though they are 
similar to the claims which have been made by the 
founders of other religions. The question still remains, 
was Jesus a religious fanatic? Was he insane, or was he 
profoundly sane? It may be pointed out, in the first 
place, that all of the greatest leaders of mankind, not 
only in religion, hut in art, in science, and in state¬ 
craft have usually been highly conscious of what they have 
accomplished and of their gifts. The so-called extrava¬ 
gant claims of Jesus could be paralleled many times, for 
example, by the great claims put forth by men of science 
for their discoveries. It is no more to be wondered at that 
Jesus was highly conscious of the supreme worth of his 
discoveries in the moral and religious realm than that a 
Kepler or a Galileo was conscious of the worth of their 
discoveries. Again, all of the great active leaders of man- 

namely, “the man,” or “the representative of man.” See especially 
article by Professor Schmidt above referred to in the Encyclopedia 
Biblica. 

1 These strongest statements attributed to Jesus are from the fourth 
Gospel, which is generally recognized by scholars in all branches of 
the church to be of uncertain authorship. They are, however, in line 
with some other sayings of Jesus, and in substantial harmony with 
the spirit of the first three Gospels. That the ideas which they 
express were a part of the early Christian tradition seems, therefore, 
probable. They are purposely cited here as examples of the extreme 
Christian tradition. Even so, if taken in a practical rather than in a 
theological sense, they are not irrational, but accord with Christian 
experience. 


148 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


kind have been more or less conscious of the convergence 
of social and historical forces in their own personality 
and in their life work. It is not surprising, then, that 
Jesus showed this consciousness to the highest degree. He 
lived at a period when the contending forces of the social 
and religious life of the Jews, and, for that matter, of the 
Greco-Roman world, were coming to a head. His soul 
rose superior to the petty, reactionary, particularistic 
tendencies of his time in religion and ethics, and he felt 
himself commissioned to realize the nobler dreams and 
aspirations of his people, especially, those of the later 
prophets. His was the pure and sensitive soul in which 
the noblest traditions of Jewish religion and ethics be¬ 
came intensified and still further idealized. Passing 
through his transcendent personality the best in Jewish 
traditions underwent a new synthesis, creating a new re¬ 
ligious and ethical attitude, fitted, as we have already said, 
to mediate the transition from the standards of barbarism 
to those of higher civilization. Thus, Jesus became the 
spiritual leader and savior of mankind, the initiator of a 
new age which would in time establish the reign of God 
among men even as it was already established in the rest 
of the universe. 

Taking into account Jesus’ position in time and his 
work, his consciousness of his mission and of the truth 
of his teachings, his claims for himself were not extrava¬ 
gant. 1 Indeed, no one who accepts his leadership and his 


1 Says Professor Simkhovitch: “There is no question in my mind 
that Christ’s deep conviction that his is the Way and the Truth was 
based on knowledge, intellectual knowledge, scientific knowledge, if 
you please. Before he felt that he was the Redeemer, he knew himself 
to be the great Discoverer. ... To me, personally, it seems childish 
not to see in Christ’s teachings an overwhelming intellectual system. 
The towering parts that are its components are parts of the same 
system, not independent units. The truth of the insight, the cohesion 
of the system were self-evident to Christ; so much so that he knew 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


149 


teachings can do anything but acknowledge that in a pro¬ 
found sense he is the way, the truth, and the life, and that 
no man can come to the Father except through his spirit, 
through belief in him and the acceptance of his leadership 
and so of his saviorship. Jesus 7 life and teaching was 
characterized, then, by the highest sanity, not by the sanity 
of a low prudence or of a false humility, but by the sanity 
of an exalted mood, such as has characterized all of the 
greater leaders of mankind. Positive Christianity will 
recognize fully these facts, and in accepting the leader¬ 
ship of Jesus will take him at his own valuation. It will 
recognize that in these statements and claims of Jesus 
there is the best evidence of his fitness for spiritual 
leadership. 

For men must have leaders in order to accomplish any¬ 
thing great in any line; and this is particularly true of 
the social world, of ethical and religious matters where 
great vision and deep enthusiasm are needed to lead ef¬ 
fectively. No human cause can be successful until it 
crystallizes, so to speak, about one or more personalities. 
Not until the cause, the movement is embodied in one or 
more masterful personalities who lead the mass is there 
any chance of the success of the cause. This is as true of 
bad causes as it is of good ones. Men are not sufficiently 
motivated by abstract ideas; it is rather loyalty to a con¬ 
crete personality, or rather to a series of such person¬ 
alities, which sways them. It is thus that men are saved; 

that they had an absolute quality; that is, coming from God.” 
Toward the Understanding of Jesus, pp. 57 and 71. Perhaps no 
scientific student of society has treated Jesus’s consciousness of his 
mission with such lucidity and penetration as Professor Simkhovitch. 
The book from which we have just quoted has rightly been said to 
give “a more realistic grasp of the entire situation and a more 
intimate understanding of the aims and methods of Jesus than a 
century of minute literary criticism of New Testament documents has 
been able to discover.” 


150 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


and it is in this sense that the rational Christian finds in 
Jesus his personal savior. 

The experience of Christians through the centuries, and 
even of many outside of the church, testifies to the essen¬ 
tial truth of the claims which Jesus himself put forth. 
In his life and teachings men have found not simply their 
best comprehension of the divine and of personal redemp¬ 
tion from low and mean social tendencies, hut an unfail¬ 
ing source of aspiration and enthusiasm for a better social 
order. “Each new crusade in the long strife for human 
betterment,” Professor Fitch truly says, “looks in sublime 
confidence to him as its forerunner and defense.” None 
can deny accordingly that Jesus as an ideal figure has, as 
a matter of fact, established his leadership of all who 
look for a human society based upon love. 1 There is no 
hope of the realization of a social life dominated by love 
without Jesus, for there is no one to whom the world 
would turn for such a vision if his leadership were de¬ 
nied. 2 And in making himself the moral and social leader 
of mankind he has surely become the redeemer and savior 
of his fellowmen. These facts must be acknowledged by 
all who would pass judgment upon the claims of Jesus; 

1 It is, of course, true that the central figure of the Christian 
movement is not the historical Jesus alone, but a growing symbol, to 
which are attached, as they develop, our highest spiritual aspirations. 
The same thing is true of any other great historical leader, as, e. g., 
Lincoln. To this extent, but to this only, can we agree with 
those who would minimize the importance of the historical Jesus. 
We may perhaps nearly agree with Schweitzer, despite his eschato¬ 
logical views, when he says (op. cit. p. 401): “Not the historical 
Jesus, hut the spirit which goes forth from Him” is the thing of 
supreme importance in religion. 

1 Surely not Buddha and Buddhism, for Buddhism is essentially a 
scheme of individual salvation and presents no ideal society as its 
goal Self-mastery, not service, is its ideal—individual salvation, and 
not a redeemed world. Whatever its merits on the individual side, 
its inculcation of passivity, quietism and asceticism throw it out of 
harmony, not only with modern civilization, but also with social 
needs and hence with social science. See p. 68. 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


151 


and they are the chief scientific ground for recognizing 
the validity of his claim to he in a spiritual sense the 
savior of mankind. And until mankind recognizes the 
validity of this claim and acknowledges him as savior and 
leader, it will remain barbarous and lost in sin . 1 


Positive Christianity, accordingly, instead of groping 
in the dark to find some great, simple soul who will lead 
the world out of its present chaos, will point to Jesus 
without any spirit of religious mysticism as the ample 
and sufficient leader of mankind. It awaits and expects 
no other leader. It knows that the knowledge as well 
as the heart of mankind will testify to the adequacy 
of his leadership in ethical and religious matters. It 
knows that a benighted and barbarous world has yet 
to accept his social saviorship. It knows that a world 
fully awake to true social and religious values will 
say, as a modern rationalist outside of the church has 
said: “Jesus Christ, come back! The tones of your voice 
have not yet died away. In spite of false creeds and 
wizard priests, through craft and rant, the heart of our 
age still turns to you. Touch the sorcery of our time and 
wake us from the vile enchantment of fear and foolish 
hate. Come! Deliver us from the doom of dead things. 
Bring life from the grave where faith lies bound. Jesus 


i Even a hostile, though fair, critic of Christianity (Sellars: The 
Next Step in Religion , p. 96) is compelled to acknowledge: “In the 
figure of Jesus, ethical and aesthetic idealization guided by religious 
emotion has created a personality of a peculiarly appealing type, well 
fitted to remain as an ideal to foster and strengthen the noblest 
tendencies.” Compare also the appreciative statement of Rabbi H. G. 
Enelow, which may be taken as typical of the liberal Jewish attitude: 
“Among the great and the good that the human race has produced, 
none has even approached Jesus in universality of appeal and 
sway. . . . He has become the most fascinating figure in history.” 
(A Jewish View of Jesus , p. 181.) 


152 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


Christ, come back! Bring dreams and let dreams come 
true! Bring love that knits all hearts into one.” 

And jet, positive Christianity will emphasize, not so 
much an emotional attachment to Jesus’ person, impor¬ 
tant as that may be, as a rational understanding and ac¬ 
ceptance of Jesus’ teachings. Of emotional Christianity 
the world has had enough and has proved its utter in¬ 
adequacy, except when it is accompanied by a thorough 
comprehension and radical acceptance of the teachings of 
Christianity’s leader. It is probably safe to say that not 
one out of four of those whom the church has persuaded 
emotionally to accept Jesus as their savior can give any 
rational account of Jesus’ teachings. 1 This, of course, 
has been one of the main reasons for the failure of Chris¬ 
tianity to become socially effective. A thorough under¬ 
standing of the practical social meaning of the teachings 
of the Master will not detract from the reverence and love 
of his person, and it will add greatly to the effectiveness 
of Christian ideals in practical life. 

These statements bring us, naturally, to a consideration 
of the importance for positive Christianity of the study 
of the Bible and, especially, of Jesus’ teachings. No one 
would expect to complete an education along artistic lines, 
or to become an artist, without the study of the work of 
great masters. No one would expect to become a worth 
while scientific worker or thinker in any line without 
study of the great scientific masterpieces in that line. So, 
it is idle to think that any one can become moral and re- 

1 It is, of course, the spirit of Jesus’ teachings, rather than the 
letter which Christians need to understand. Says Professor Coe 
{A Social Theory of Religious Education, p. 315) : “The most daring 
and most unflinching social teaching will never cease to look back to 
Jesus. But if it sees Jesus, it will look with him to the future. It 
will breathe his spirit, but it will not stop with his words.” See also 
Chapter XI of this book. 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


153 


ligious in a rational way without the study of the great 
masterpieces in ethics and religion. Now, by the common 
consent of all the great religious thinkers of our civiliza¬ 
tion the supreme religious masterpieces of our cultural 
tradition are embodied in that unique collection of litera¬ 
ture which we term the Bible. The ethical and religious 
value of the Bible, especially of the Gospels, for the estab¬ 
lishment of Christian civilization cannot he doubted. 
Other things being equal, a people will be Christian di¬ 
rectly in proportion to the attention which they pay to 
the teachings of Jesus as found in the Bible. One of the 
best evidences of the decay of the hold of Christian ideals 
upon our civilization is the small attention given to the 
Bible at the present time. It is idle to suppose that these 
ideals can become socially prevalent mental patterns witE 
out continued attention and study, especially on the part 
of the young. However much our religious life must be 
based upon the actual facts of experience, it still remains 
true that Christian principles and ideals can best be under¬ 
stood by studying them in the original sources. While 
these sources should not be regarded with superstition, but 
should be subject to the same standards of criticism 
which we would apply to any other original sources, yet 
it must be recognized that we find in the Bible the original 
“source material” for the rise, development, and meaning 
of the Christian movement. It is not an accident, there¬ 
fore, that Christians have discovered in this great collec¬ 
tion of literature the chief inspiration for their own ideals 
and practical living. Positive Christianity, freeing the 
Bible from superstition and misunderstanding, will give 
it its proper place in the religious life as the great source- 
book of religious idealism. The uncritical use of the 
Bible like the uncritical use of any other classic, however, 


154 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


will be condemned as not in accord with the scientific 
spirit. 1 Its use will he to reveal the origin, development, 
and nature of the Christian ideal. 

The attitude of positive Christianity toward prayer will 
also be unequivocal. All religions, except the very low¬ 
est, are characterized by the use of prayer, or by what 
amounts to the same thing, introspective meditation. It 
is indeed in this way that the religious attitude of mind 
functions as a sort of moral equilibrator. Without it the 
full energies of the moral and religious life are scarcely 

1 Some statement of the attitude of the author toward the Biblical 
criticism of the nineteenth century may be helpful in order to avoid 
misunderstanding. In general, critical scholarship is to be welcomed 
along every line of human interest for reasons which were briefly 
noted at the very beginning of this book. But there are many reasons 
why the critical movement in religion and theology of the nineteenth 
century, especially as developed in Germany, cannot be considered the 
acme of scholarship. In the first place, criticism to be truly pro¬ 
ductive must be constructive. It should not be mere destructive 
skepticism. Institutions as well as individuals have a right to 
demand that criticism be constructive. In the second place, the 
importance of documentary criticism may be easily exaggerated, and 
such criticism itself become a sort of scholasticism. While the Bible 
is infinitely precious for the Christian movement, yet the Christian 
movement exists independent of the Bible and would probably con¬ 
tinue to exist were there no Bible. This is not always appreciated by 
some schools of critics and hence they have had often an exaggerated 
idea of the importance of their work. It is not too much to say that 
a great deal of it has been irrelevant to the great issues of religion. 
The entire documents of Christianity, Mohammedanism, and Buddhism 
might conceivably be lost; yet the problem of the Christian move¬ 
ment, the Mohammedan movement, the Buddhist movement, would 
remain essentially the same for the world. Growing out of the 
scholasticism of the critics there has been, in the third place, often 
a failure among them to appreciate the bearing of nearly related 
sciences upon their work. They have failed, in other words, in 
synthetic scholarship in many cases. The astounding archaeological, 
anthropological, sociological, and psychological errors of some of them 
must of course be attributed in part to the time in which they wrote, 
but also in part to lack of synthetic scholarship. All of which shows 
that the ideas of the critics must not be taken for scientific truth, 
and that much of their work needs to be done over in a different 
spirit, more constructive, more synthetic, more scientific The best Biblical 
scholarship is now undertaking this. 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


165 

capable of control and direction. 1 It is through prayer 
in every religion that the worshipper and the deity come 
into communion. It establishes a social and personal re¬ 
lationship between them, and the social efficacy of religion 
is secured through this mental comradeship of the human 
and the divine. God becomes the Great Companion only 
to the extent that conversation with him is maintained. 
Inasmuch as prayer means the social energizing of the 
personality through a sense of communion with the divine, 
it is something which increases with the higher evolution 
of religion rather than decreases. 2 In Christianity the 
ideal is that the whole life shall become a prayer, in the 
sense that the inner personal life shall ever be kept in 
constant communion with the divine. At the same time 
it is evident that when prayer becomes thus an attitude 
pervading all practical living on a high religious plane, it 
must lose the magical character which it once had, not 
only in the religions antecedent to Christianity, but also 
often in theological Christianity itself. It must become 
a rational religious practice. 

What then must be the conception of prayer in rational 
religion? Surely not that the order of the universe is 
changed by it. This violates the fundamental principle 
which we laid down in the beginning, that religion and 
religious practices are for the sake of adaptation. Prayer 
is simply one method by which the religious attitude se¬ 
cures the adaptation of the individual to life and its en¬ 
vironing forces. It secures this adaptation not through 
changing the order of the universe, but through changing 

1 For a brief psychological statement of the effect of prayer, see 
Hall: Morale, p. 350; for a fuller psychological discussion, see James: 
Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 463, 477 and 528. James calls 
prayer “the very soul and essence of religion.” See also Coe: The 
Psychology of Religion, Chapter XVII. 

2 Prayer in the strict sense is relatively rare in the lower religions. 


156 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


the attitudes of men to their ideals, to one another, and 
to the great forces of life and the universe. But this 
change in the human attitude is the thing that is su¬ 
premely necessary to bring about the benefits which re¬ 
ligion seeks. There is, therefore, no necessary element of 
self-delusion in prayer. On the contrary, if the assump¬ 
tion of sane religion must be what we have said, that 
“only man is vile,” then only man needs to be changed, 
not God or the order of the universe. 1 Salvation, both 
personal and social, can come to man only through the 
change in his inner life; and it is prayer which is the 
effective agency of bringing about these changes and in 
controlling them so that ideals shall he realized. The 
experience of religious persons testifies universally to the 
efficacy of prayer and no positive religion based upon the 
facts of life will deny this. On the contrary, it will give 
not only a more rational place to prayer in the religious 
life, but a larger one than mere superstition can pos¬ 
sibly do. 

We must always remember that motivation, energizing 
of the will, is in one sense the supreme function of re¬ 
ligion, and that the practice of prayer, like the beliefs in 
God, immortality, and salvation, plaj^s here a great part. 
The problem is how to make all these work in the right 
direction. It must be admitted that many of the prayers 
of religious people are neither rational nor ethical, and 
this a positive social Christianity must correct. In part, 
no doubt, prayer is often instinctive, a mere cry for help 
to the superhuman forces of the universe. Even when it 
has become partly rational it still frequently remains 
grossly unethical, as in the prayers not only of children 

1 The moral order being necessarily cooperative, it is, of course, as 
right to conceive that God needs man’s help as that man needs God’s 
help. Man and God are co-partners in a common task. But the 
imperfections in this cooperation are on man’s side, not on God’s. 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


157 


and criminals, but also sometimes of respectable church 
members. There is too much prayer which is pagan and 
selfish. Obviously prayer can be tolerated in a social re¬ 
ligion only as it is directed toward spiritual ends and 
accords with the higher social values. 

This does not mean, however, that there should be any 
sort of social censorship upon prayer or the forms of 
worship. The right of the individual to worship as seems 
best to him and to appeal to God over the decisions of the 
mass of his fellowmen is salutary. This freedom, which 
the individual may claim, of direct communion with, and 
appeal to, the deity is one of the most precious achieve¬ 
ments of the higher ethical religions. But in reality the 
recognition of this right of free access of every individual 
to God and of freedom of worship is in accord with the 
highest social values; for it makes the individual religious 
attitude directly creative, not only of personal character, 
but also of social order. It is therefore really in accord 
with the general principle which we have laid down, that 
rational religion must demand that prayer and religious 
practices in general be directed to spiritual and social 
ends; for freedom in these matters, experience has shown, 
best conduces to higher spiritual and social development. 

Positive Christianity will be tolerant, not only in these 
matters, but in all matters of religious belief and prac¬ 
tice ; for with science it will share the supreme faith that 
all that truth needs to establish itself is a fair field and 
no favors. The world understands the absurdity of trying 
to establish scientific truth by any degree of coercion. 
It should see the equal absurdity of trying to secure the 
acceptance of religious and moral truth by any coercion . 
The appeal of a positive religion, like that of science, will 
be to the facts of life and to intelligence. Hence a posi- 


158 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


tive Christianity will be tolerant even of non-Cliristian 
religions. It will welcome whatever they have to give 
which is of value. It will be willing to judge them by 
their fruits, and especially by their effects upon social 
life and human culture. 

But the toleration of positive Christianity can, no more 
than that of science, be a toleration of error. It asks that 
all religious sects submit their beliefs to the tests of ex¬ 
perience and reason. No doubt a large liberty will always 
be tolerated in transcendental beliefs, but when such be¬ 
liefs vitally affect human relations their truth or falsity 
must be judged by their fruits. To be tolerated in a 
rational and social world they must be such as to serve 
mankind. In the long run, at the least, they must show 
that they will result in a better human world—in increas¬ 
ing rather than diminishing human fellowship. For re¬ 
ligion exists for man, not man for religion. To this 
extent positive Christianity will agree with Comte that 
in its values and judgments religion must be anthropo¬ 
centric; that is to say, it must be developed in harmony 
with social science. This is only reiterating, however, 
our fundamental principles that religion is an adaptive 
process, that it should be redemptive, and that humanity 
is the ultimate subject of its redemption. 

Many proposals are being put forth for the creation and 
establishment of a new religion, since Christianity, it is 
asserted, is hopelessly discredited. But the religion of 
Jesus has not been discredited; it is only the practices of 
so-called Christians and Christian churches. Apart from 
the difficulties of such an enterprise under the complex 
conditions of modern life, a new religion would surely 
defeat its very purpose. For what our world needs most 
at the present time is to acknowledge the social and moral 


POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY 


159 


leadership of Jesus. The most idealistic religious move¬ 
ment that neglected this element of personal leadership 
would defeat itself. If there he those to whom the word 
“Christian” is an offense on account of misrepresentations 
of the Christian spirit and life, yet who sincerely desire 
a Christian world, one dominated by active good will, 
then the rational thing for all who call themselves Chris¬ 
tians is to demonstrate what the true Christian spirit is. 
When this is done, and when moreover people understand 
that scientifically the work of Jesus in religion and ethics 
is comparable to the work of the great founders of modern 
sciences, then there will he no more objection to Christian 
religion than to Copernican astronomy. Intellectually one 
will he as readily accepted as the other. 

The solution which positive Christianity proposes of the 
religious problem of our time, then, is simple. Let the 
religious leaders of our day grasp the full social signifi¬ 
cance of religion, drop their theological disputations, give 
religion the positive, humanitarian trend which civiliza¬ 
tion demands, recognize that their essential work is the 
maintenance and propagation of rational social values, 
and teach clearly, as Jesus did, that the only possible 
service of God must consist in the service of men regard¬ 
less of their race, class, or condition. Let also the recog¬ 
nized basis of religious fellowship become full consecra¬ 
tion to the service of mankind. If this were done, not 
only would the churches forget their traditional differ¬ 
ences, hut they would rally to their support all good men 
everywhere and eventually overcome all their active op¬ 
ponents. 1 This is not advocating something novel. Al- 

1 Again we may quote Conklin (op. cit. p. 244) : “The time may 
come sooner than some of us expect when in all things except spirit 
and purpose, religion may once more be a personal matter; when 
churches will welcome all men of good will; when love of God and 
love of fellow men will be the one requirement for mutual fellowship 


1G0 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


ready this movement is well under way in the more 
advanced Christian churches. But the time has come to 
take seriously in hand the reconstruction of our religious 
life along humanitarian lines. For it is only an actually 
realized humanitarian religion, sanctioning and enforcing 
a humanitarian ethics and working in harmony with mod¬ 
ern social science which can guarantee peace and good will 
among classes, nations, and races, and prevent the collapse 
of our civilization. On the other hand if such a religion 
of human service becomes generally accepted all of the 
irrational, unsocial, and unprogressive elements in our re¬ 
ligious life would disappear, and actual Christianity 
would become “the religion of humanity.” 

and service. When that time comes, religion and science will be at 
one.” For a simple outline of such a Christianity in harmony with 
modern science, see Ames, The New Orthodoxy. 


CHAPTER VT 


THE ESSENTIALS OF A SOCIAL RELIGION 

We have outlined the great general principles which 
we must follow if we are to reconstruct religion so as to 
meet the requirements of modern life. Now we must try 
to see the social implications of all this, both in general 
and* in particular. What social principles, in other words, 
does social science 1 * 3 indicate as essential for a positive 
social religion ? If institutions are to be saved as well as 
individuals, what is the doctrine of social salvation ? 
How shall we build our social world ? If we build it in 
accordance with modern social science, will it turn out 
to be the world of Jesus’ vision, a “kingdom of God V 9 2 
These questions we shall try to answer in the succeeding 
chapters of this hook. 

In part we have already indicated the answers. We 
have seen, for example, that social science demands a 
religion which will release the creative energies of man; 
which will not only inspire faith and hope in individual 
life, hut enthuse communities for progress; which will not 

1 The term “social science,” it should he remembered, is used in 
this book to include not only the “pure” social sciences, but also 
social ethics and the applied social sciences. See foot-note in 

Preface, p. x. 

3 A number of writers following Coe (see his Social Theory of 
Religious Education) prefer such a term as “the democracy of God,” 
or “the commonwealth of God,” as the New Testament “kingdom of 
God” is thought no longer properly to convey the meaning intended. 
The exact term employed is, of course, immaterial, provided the 
proper social content is given to it, corresponding to the content 
given to the New Testament term by Jesus. 

161 


1G2 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


only strengthen and uplift individuals, hut send them 
forth to huild a new and better social world. We have 
seen that such a religion must depend practically upon 
knowledge of all the forces which make or mar human 
life, whether in its individual or in its collective aspects; 
that is, it must ally itself with science. A positive social 
religion and social science will be accordingly in practice 
inseparable. We have seen finally that such a religion 
will blend religion and ethics by giving a social direction 
to religious practices, recognizing that the only possible 
service of God must consist in the service of men—the 
fundamental principle, as we have so often reiterated, of 
the religion of Jesus. 

The postulate of such a religion of human service must, 
of course, be the supreme worth of men, no matter what 
their race, class, or condition may be, so that even the 
humblest service done for men takes on a new dignity, 
because it is a service rendered to God. This is the cen¬ 
tral teaching of all social religion, and of the religion of 
Jesus in particular. Is it the teaching of social science? 

Modern social science shows beyond question that all 
the wealth of the world really resides in men; that there 
are no values of any sort apart from men; and that all 
the values which we know are their creation. Human 
beings, in other words, are not only the sole sources of 
value, but they are the supreme values. The develop¬ 
ment of the resources which are in men, therefore, is the 
only way in which the world can be permanently enriched 
along any line. 1 Hence the greatest concern of human 
society must be the production of men who can take their 

1 This truth, now accepted by all economists, received early and 
vigorous championship by such economic writers as Richard T. Ely 
in America and J. A. Hobson in England. Compare Carver, Principles 
of Political Economy, Chapter VI. 


ESSENTIALS OF A SOCIAL RELIGION 163 

place in our human world and help to carry on its life 
in the best ways possible. 

But it is not men in isolation that social science dis¬ 
covers to be valuable. Men create values only by coming 
into relationships with other men, and they create them 
directly in proportion as they work together successfully 
at the tasks of life. The collective life of men which we 
call society, in other words, is carried on by the continual 
exchange of services between men. It is by mutual service 
that men live. It is this reciprocity of service which is 
the basis of all human institutions and all civilization. 
The more intense this exchange of services is, the more 
social values are produced and the more social life is built 
up; and the more equal the exchange is, the more satis¬ 
fying and harmonious is the social life. 1 II In other words, 
social science finds co-operation to be the inner, construc¬ 
tive principle of group life; and the wider and the more 
harmonious this co-operation is, the richer and the more 
perfect is the social life of mankind as a whole. 2 Civili¬ 
zation and all its values, then, depend upon the continu¬ 
ance and development of co-operation among men. Obvi¬ 
ously a social religion must aim to maximize co-operation, 
and it will be successful in doing this only as it teaches 
the value of mutual service. The inculcation in the in- 


1 See Novicow, “Mechanism and Limits of Human Association” (in 
American Journal of Sociology, November, 1917), especially Chapters 

II and III. 

J Practically all modern sociology of scientific standing has united 
to demonstrate this truth. See, e. g., Small, General Sociology, p. 710; 
Ross, Principles of Sociology, Chapter XXI; Todd, Theories of Social 
Progress, p. 41. On the biological side evidence will be found in such 
writers, among many others, as J. Arthur Thomson, David Starr 
Jordan, Vernon Kellogg, and William Patten. Professor Patten’s 
recent work, The Grand Strategy of Evolution: The Social Philosophy 
of a Biologist, is especially interesting as showing that the conflict 
philosophy of society is without adequate biological foundation. See 
especially Chapter I. 


164 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


dividual of the attitude of service toward his fellows 
must , then, he the primary aim of a social religion. 

If a social religion must first of all teach social service 
the question still remains what sort of service shall it be. 
Assuming always that the service is intelligent, is it to be 
rendered chiefly in a material or in a spiritual way ? Is 
the most social religion the one which will maximize eco¬ 
nomic co-operation and economic production ? Or will it 
pay even more attention to the production of non-economic 
values ? Moreover, is service to be rendered indifferently 
to the strong and to the weak, or will social religion em¬ 
phasize especially service to those in need of help ? 

There can be no doubt that social religion as well as 
social science must teach the fundamental importance of 
producing material goods and of satisfying the economic 
wants of men. Feeding the hungry and clothing the 
naked are obviously the primary services needed by human 
beings. Services rendered to meet the material needs of 
men, especially when these needs are great, are of the 
highest social, and so, ethical and religious, value; for 
until these needs are satisfied there can be no development 
of the higher, spiritual life of men. We must all agree 
that in this sense “the greatest service of all is the service 
of food.” 1 

Rut material goods, as Aristotle long ago remarked, 
though living in a pagan world, have a limit to their social 
utility; and that limit is their power to promote the de¬ 
velopment of the higher, spiritual life of men. Too great 
an abundance of material goods, so far from aiding higher 
social and moral development, becomes an impediment to 
it. This is true, so far as we know, even if material 

1 For further discussion of the relations of religion and material 
needs, see Chapter VIII. 


ESSENTIALS OF A SOCIAL RELIGION 165 

goods are evenly distributed in society. No matter how 
evenly distributed, too great an abundance of material 
goods would be sure to undermine the higher spiritual 
life of men and lead to besotted materialism, in the moral 
sense of the term. It is true, of course, that the danger 
of too great a general abundance of material goods is 
relatively remote in our civilization, and that which ap¬ 
pears to be such a danger is really due to the concentra¬ 
tion of wealth in the hands of a few. But this fact 
cannot obscure the truth of the general principle that the 
social utility of material goods is limited, not only for 
any one social class, but for all social classes. 

It is not an accident, then, that the higher religions 
quite generally condemn too great accumulation of such 
goods, and invariably counsel contentedness with small 
means. This is not merely to secure the distribution of 
such goods to the unfortunate, nor is it usually for the 
sake of mere asceticism, as is so often alleged. The reason 
is more simple; for as social science shows, the energy of 
society at a given time being a fixed quantity, energy 
devoted to the production of material goods after neces¬ 
sities are met cannot be devoted to building up family 
life, government, religion, art, science, and education. If 
we want the higher life of society in art, science, educa¬ 
tion, religion, government, and the family to develop, 
then, the energy devoted to the production of material 
goods must be limited. 

To be sure, what are material necessities and what is 
over-abundance of material goods, social science would 
say, are relative matters, dependent upon the stage of 
social culture. But this does not detract from the force 
of the conclusion just stated, and it is evident therefore 
that it is not sufficient for social religion merely to teach 


166 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


that men render service when they work in the economic 
sense and are good producers. Society needs services 
beyond these economic services. The services rendered by 
individuals as fathers and mothers, as brothers and sisters, 
as friends and neighbors, as members of communities, 
through the family, government, art, religion, science, and 
education, in the production of healthy, happy, intelligent, 
unselfish men and women, may be dominantly non¬ 
economic; but they are the services which count most in 
the building of civilization; and in proportion as men put 
energy into these services, after material necessities are 
provided, in that proportion is the ideal of social life 
realized. The production of men, not commodities, must 
he the aim of sound social religion. The end of all social 
service should, therefore, be spiritual. It would, indeed, 
be quite unnecessary to say these things if the prevailing 
materialism of our time had not obscured these truths and 
even often denied them. 1 

When social religion demands the complete consecration 
of the individual to the service of his fellowmen, there¬ 
fore, it is calling him to a spiritual service. It is not the 
service of making men happy and contented animals, but 
rather of developing them into truly human, intelligent, 
loyal members of an ideal society—a redeemed humanity. 
And in this, social religion is one with the religion of 
Jesus, which, while recognizing the fundamental character 
of the needs of men in a material way, looks to their sal¬ 
vation into a spiritual social order as the end. 

Is the human service, which social religion enjoins, to 
be rendered indifferently to the strong and the weak, or 
will it emphasize the service of those who are in need 
of help ? Modern social science discovers that human com- 

1 See again Chapter VIII. 


ESSENTIALS OF A SOCIAL RELIGION 107 

munities progress very largely in proportion as they raise 
the general level or average of their total life; and this 
level is raised not by producing a few superior indi¬ 
viduals, hut by raising the weak, developing the unde¬ 
veloped, and fitting as many as possible for the best pos¬ 
sible life. Human societies, in other words, progress not 
through producing supermen, but through the diffusion 
of welfare and intelligence among the masses of mankind. 
It is in the undeveloped personalities and characters of men 
that society has its chief potential resources. Whenever 
the ignorant can be made intelligent, the vicious good, 
the physically weak the physically strong, society has 
added to the strength of all; for the strength of human 
groups consists in extending and intensifying their power 
to co-operate. All civilized human groups, therefore, 
strive to fit not only as many as possible of their members 
to survive, but for the best possible living. A sound 
social religion will, therefore, emphasize service to the 
needy and the weak. 1 Its emphasis will not be so much 
upon the fraternity of the strong as upon showing fra¬ 
ternity toward those who need help. 

This we have seen is a distinctive mark of Christianity. 
As a social religion its peculiar note has been the redemp¬ 
tion of the vicious, the helping of the needy, and the 
strengthening of the weak. In our world, so far as we 
can see, for a long time to come, social religion will have 
to emphasize this redemptive work. Its main practical 
preoccupation will have to be bringing knowledge to the 
ignorant, virtue to the vicious, health to the sick, wealth 

1 A further sociological reason for this is the impossibility under 
modern conditions of maintaining in the same community two dif¬ 
ferent levels of civilization without gravitation toward the lower 
level. No community, in other words, can rise far above its worst 
socially tolerated conditions. Vice or typhoid, e. g., in one section of 
the community endangers all the rest. This is a familiar sociological 
principle. 


168 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


to the poverty stricken, and strength to the weak of every 
sort. It will seek to do this, to be sure, by prevention, 
wherever possible, rather than by cure; but the chasms 
which exist in modern society must be bridged, and" they 
cannot be bridged by levelling men down, but only by 
helping them up to higher levels whenever and wherever 
that is possible. A religion which is adapted to the re¬ 
quirements of our present world must very evidently be 
a socially redemptive religion. 

But service which is rendered under compulsion, even 
though it be only the compulsion of religious and moral 
precepts, soon becomes slavery. Only a service which is 
spontaneous, which springs from inner motives, can con¬ 
tinue to be rendered gladly. A social religion that 
merely teaches service as an outward form is not enough. 
Social religion must above all, therefore, cultivate the 
inner attitudes and motives which issue in service. A 
genuinely social religion must teach emotional attitudes 
which naturally, spontaneously, issue in social service. It 
must, as we say, touch the heart of man. In other words, 
a social religion must kindle the sympathetic emotions. 
Service must be motivated by love to have the highest 
social value. Religion must become a great device to 
accumulate, diffuse, and transmit altruism in society. It 
must inculcate the love of man as man. It must develop 
a sense of human brotherhood throughout humanity. It 
must cultivate love, not simply towards a few men, to¬ 
wards one’s own social set, or nation, or race, but towards 
all men. 1 

This is not Oriental mysticism,” as it is so often said 

1 Compare the argument in Hobhouse, The Rational Good, especially 
Chapter VI. The word “love'’ is used in this chapter and throughout 
the book, of course, in the ethical sense, meaning active good wiV 
or devotion to the welfare of others. 


ESSENTIALS OF A SOCIAL RELIGION 169 


to be by the “hard” school of social thinkers; nor is it 
impracticable. On the contrary, social experience shows 
that the only secure foundation of co-operation in human 
groups is active good will based upon the sympathy and 
understanding of all their members, and that human co¬ 
operation has widened in proportion as sympathy and the 
consciousness of kind have widened. 1 Wherever the 
attempt has been made to base co-operation upon mere 
self-interest, there an unstable social situation has resulted, 
which sooner or later has issued in open conflict. Only 
good will based upon active sympathy has proved equal 
to producing lasting social solidarity. 

This is natural, some may say, in small human groups 
such as the family, the local community, the ancient city- 
state, and even in modern social classes; but it is impos¬ 
sible where there are wide differences among men, and 
especially differences in material interests; there it be¬ 
comes “mysticism.” But social investigation shows that 
there has been a constant expansion of sympathy and good 
will in human history to larger and larger groups, and 
that we cannot set limits to this expansion, which appar¬ 
ently depends entirely upon the education of individuals. 2 

1 See the author’s Introduction to Social Psychology, pp. 255-256. 
Compare also Professor Giddings’s statement of the same conclusion 
in his Descriptive and Historical Sociology, pp. 298-300, 303-305, 
352-355. 

2 Says Professor Cooley (Social Organization, p. 203) : “The mind, 
in its'best moments, is naturally Christian; because when we are 
most fully alive to the life about us, the sympathetic becomes the 
rational; what is good for you is good for me because I share your 
life; and I need no urging to do by you as I would have you do by me. 
Justice and kindness are matters of course, and also humility, which 
comes from being aware of something superior to your ordinary self. 
To one in whom human nature is fully awake, ‘love your enemies and 
do good to them that despitefully use you’ is natural and easy, 
because despiteful people are seen to be in a state of unhappy 
aberration from the higher life of kindness, and there is an impulse 
to help them to get back.” But all this depends, as Todd points out 
(Theories of Social Progress, Chapter V), upon the cultivation and 
development of a sympathetic or socially efficient imagination. 


170 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


It shows, moreover, that religion especially has proved 
able to break down the differences between men and unite 
the most diverse in bonds of sympathy and good will, or 
love. This, indeed, we have seen to be the essential social 
function on the feeling side of humanitarian religion. By 
universalizing sympathetic feeling, or love, it makes pos¬ 
sible the widest possible mutual service and co-operation. 
Hence the first and great commandment of social religion 
must be universal love, or good will, extending even to 
enemies, and reconciling all men to one another. To be¬ 
come dynamic, to affect human motives, a social religion 
must promote human fellowship and so must teach men 
to cultivate sympathy, love. 

We have said much about the need of intelligence in 
social relations and even of the need of the control of 
emotions by intelligence. But, even from the standpoint 
of social science, we must admit the equal need of good 
will to build an ideal society. In our present human 
world with its seemingly hopeless division into hostile 
groups of all sorts, we would seem to be more in need of 
good will, indeed, than of intelligence; for until good will 
has laid a basis for some approach there would seem to 
be little opportunity for intelligence to function. When 
one contemplates the strife and hate of our present world, 
one might be pardoned if he claimed that the world needs 
good will more than science or art, yes, even more than 
food and shelter. For knowledge can be secured and na¬ 
ture conquered by men co-operating in the work of life; 
but knowledge and material goods avail nothing if good 
will is lacking. Moreover, good will appears equally 
necessary with science for overcoming strife, crime, pov¬ 
erty, and ignorance. For man lives a collective life; he 
shares his fate with his fellow-men around him, and so 


ESSENTIALS OF A SOCIAL RELIGION 171 


of necessity he lives in and through good will. No man 
lives to himself alone. We are all members one of 
another. If any, even the humblest, is made to suffer, 
every one of us, whether or not we recognize the fact, is 
thereby injured. These assertions are not mere senti¬ 
ment; they are a part of the perceptions of sound social 
science. “The whole human problem,” as Comte said, 
“consists in establishing unity, personal and social, by 
the constant subordination of selfishness to altruism.” 

It is here, of course, that science discovers the special 
need of social religion if ever co-operation is to take the 
place of the world-wide strife of the present; for only 
social religion can universalize love, or good will, in our 
world. Material interests and a thousand other things 
divide men. It is religion, as we have seen, which uni¬ 
versalizes social values. Sane science recognizes that it 
alone cannot bridge the chasms which exist in our human 
world. Men’s hearts must be touched. To bridge the 
chasms which now separate in so many cases classes, na¬ 
tions, and races a religion of universal love is alone ade¬ 
quate. This is true even oftentimes in small communi¬ 
ties. Even in them our imperfectly developed civiliza- 
' tion often premits chasms in their sympathies to grow up 
between men which make real unity impossible in social 
living, and which only a religion that cultivates social 
sympathy, or love, can effectively bridge. 

But even more do we need a social or humanitarian 
religion in the relations of the greater groups of men, 
such as classes, nations, and races. Here the need of 
reconciliation is most apparent, for here strife is at its 
maximum. It is group egoism which particularly dis¬ 
turbs our world at present, and menaces its future even 
more. If the world wants peace, it must find a way of 
breaking down the barriers of misunderstanding and 


172 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


selfishness which now separate classes, nations, and races, 
and of realizing universal human fellowship. Science can 
aid here by showing the essential identity and universal 
interdependence of all men. But fellowship is realized 
not simply through understanding, hut even more through 
sympathy and active good will. Manifestly, where there 
are so many possibilities of misunderstanding through 
differences of place, of interests, and of condition, there 
is especial need of a religion which shall cultivate uni¬ 
versal sympathy and good will, or love, and shall inter¬ 
mediate between such great groups. 

This is especially so in the case of nations and races, 
for here the traditional attitude has been not only one of 
egoism and isolation, but also one of fear, distrust, and 
hate. No mere peace treaties, or league of nations, or 
“balance of power” can under such circumstances success¬ 
fully put an end to strife. Rather the whole spirit of 
nations must be changed. A basis for enduring reconcilia¬ 
tion must be found. Group egoism as a policy and prac¬ 
tice must be discredited; and in place of fear, distrust, 
and hate must come understanding, confidence, and good 
will. Now, as Gautama Buddha said long before Jesus, 
“Hatred does not cease by hatred, but by love.” 1 It is 
love, in other words, which overcomes hate and reconciles 
men to one another. This is as true of groups of men as 
of individuals. Manifestly “the healing of the nations” 
requires a religion of humanity, which shall teach the love 
and service of all men. Only thus can the foundations of 
enduring peace be laid. 

No scientific social thinker doubts that the cessation of 
strife and the coming of durable peace is the great im- 

1 Rhys-Davids, Buddhism, p. 128. The exact quotation is, “For 
never in this world does hatred cease by hatred; hatred ceases by 
love; this is always its nature.” 


ESSENTIALS OF A SOCIAL RELIGION 113 

mediate need of our world; for peace is an indispensable 
condition for all the constructive work of civilization. 1 
It is not simply international peace, however, which is 
needed, but rather general social peace; for at bottom all 
war is but a symptom of an egoistic, predatory spirit in 
civilization in general. Now, a religion of the love and 
service of all men would lay a foundation for lasting social 
peace, because, first of all, it would repudiate force and 
selfishness as bases for human relations and with them 
the whole pagan philosophy that might is right or can 
make right, that human beings can profit by living at the 
expense of other human beings, that to dominate is the 
end of existence. It would place in the stead of these 
anti-social doctrines, patterns of good will, of mutual 
service, of solidarity, of sacrifice for the good of all, taken 
from the family life. Such patterns, accepted as the su¬ 
preme social values, would shatter group egoism and open 
up the way for the establishment and maintenance of 
normal, helpful, co-operative relations in the great groups 
of men, because the conciliatory attitude would then be 
held in honor, as it is now in the normal family; and 
when a wrong has been done, it would point the way to 
the restoration of social unity. Groups would no longer 
seek to remedy injustice by returning wrong for wrong, 
evil for evil, but by finding means of mutual conciliation. 
Their whole spirit would be changed, because their stand¬ 
ards of conduct would be different and their attention 
would be centered upon co-operation rather than upon con¬ 
flict. This is the only pathway to permanent social peace 
among men. 

But how far, it may be asked, is this principle of active 

1 For elaboration, see the author's discussion of “War and Social 
Evolution,” Chapter III, in America and the New Era, edited by 
E. M. Friedman. 


174 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

good will, or love, to be carried ? Is it practicable unless 
it is accepted as the guiding principle of conduct by all? 
Is it not, in a world so largely ruled by egoism as ours, 
apt to be nothing more than a mere hypocritical, and even 
dangerous, sentiment ? The reply is that social science 
has discovered no way in which the world can be trans¬ 
formed from a world of egoism and strife to one of fel¬ 
lowship except by the leadership, and if necessary the 
suffering, of those who have the vision of a better human 
world. Men are imitative creatures. They are prone to 
treat others as they are treated by others. But they are 
also intelligent creatures, and they usually select as pat¬ 
terns for imitation conduct which experience shows to 
work best with themselves and with others. Hence while 
strife breeds strife, and hate breeds hate, kindliness also 
breeds kindliness, and love, love; but the superior satis¬ 
factions in the latter case are evident even to the dullest 
mind. There can be no question that kindliness and love 
would soon win out if this were a fully intelligent world. 

But strong, brutal passions persist, and traditions of 
selfishness and strife are hard to uproot. However, to 
wait till all accept the principle of love as the guide of 
their conduct would be to postpone indefinitely progress 
toward a world of universal good will. Rather it is evi¬ 
dent that the world must be redeemed by growing love as 
well as by growing intelligence. “Hatred does not cease 
by hatred, but by love.” A positive social religion must 
teach love or good will, therefore, as an absolute principle. 
Love must be extended to all, even to the lowest and 
meanest of mankind. Otherwise it must fail as the prin¬ 
ciple of social redemption. Love breeds love, good will, 
and because it is socially right it overcomes hate, just a 3 
truth, because it is right, overcomes error. It harmonizes, 


ESSENTIALS OF A SOCIAL RELIGION 175 


because it adjusts individuals, so far as motives are con¬ 
cerned, to the requirements of social life. 

It is particularly necessary that good will be main¬ 
tained toward enemies; otherwise there will be no basis 
for reconciliation and the restoration of genuine social 
relations. Plainly the duty of forgiveness is a clear 
corollary to the doctrine of universal good will. But this 
does not mean that we are to condone wrong-doing and 
meanness. Nor does it mean that we are to offer no 
impediment to the wrong-doer in his wrong-doing. But 
it does mean that we are to distinguish between the 
wrong-doer and his evil deed. While society must combat 
wrong-doing, its duty is always to reclaim the wrong-doer, 
if that is possible. Whatever it does to the wrong-doer 
must be dictated by good will, and must be for his social 
redemption as well as for the benefit of all. If physical 
force is to be employed, its use must be controlled by good 
will. The pattern here, as everywhere in the social life, 
is the family. There we do not reprehend the use of 
physical force under certain circumstances, provided that 
its use is controlled by intelligence and love. Its use is 
indeed necessary at times in the case of abnormal and un¬ 
developed individuals, and is in no way inconsistent with 
the principle of love. So in society at large the use of 
physical force to stop wrong-doing when necessary is in 
no way inconsistent with the principle of universal love, 
provided its use is controlled by intelligent good will. 
Such, for example, is, or should be, the use of its police 
powers by an enlightened government. Indeed, as we 
shall see, good will, in order to be socially effective, must 
always be organized both negatively, to repress evil, and 
positively, to promote the good. 

Social science does not find, therefore, that there is any 


176 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


necessary sentimentality or moral flabbiness connected 
with the principle of universal love; nor does it find any 
such taint attached to the concept of redeeming love. 
Love as a social principle does not mean “coddling”; nor 
does readiness to forgive encourage evil, as is sometimes 
claimed. Rather it is the only method of reclaiming and 
restoring the socially erring. This world is filled not only 
with undeveloped individuals and peoples who need help, 
but also with individuals and groups who have erred and 
socially lost their way. Indeed, since sin is a social mat¬ 
ter—the outcome of social as well as individual conditions 
—practically the whole world presents this condition at 
the present time. A religion which is going to be any 
good in such a world must stress a sacrificial, redeeming 
love toward all men as the supreme need—a love which 
will lead men to sacrifice themselves without stint or 
limit in order to serve mankind; to die, if necessary, in 
order that the world may be freed from sin and error. 
Sacrifice as an end in itself cannot be justified by either 
sound religion or sound science; but sacrifice as a means 
of human service is an altogether different matter. Social 
religion regards sacrifice when prompted by love and made 
for the sake of human service the supreme measure of the 
ethical and religious spirit; and social science sees in such 
enthusiasm of humanity the height of social passion and, 
when guided and controlled by adequate intelligence, the 
best promise of the world’s ultimate redemption. 

But the sacrificial love which social religion inculcates 
has a more common, everyday significance, science dis¬ 
covers, apart from great socially redemptive movements. 
For men live together, social science reveals, not merely 
by the exchange of services, but also by the exchange of 
sacrifices—that is, by rendering services to one another 


ESSENTIALS OF A SOCIAL RELIGION 177 

for which no like service is, or can be, rendered in return. 
The very conditions of human life necessitate this. Every 
generation of men, for example, must stand, so to speak, 
upon the shoulders of the preceding generations. Un¬ 
counted toil and suffering of hundreds of generations have 
made possible whatever we enjoy to-day; but we too must 
toil and suffer if the world to-morrow is to live a nobler 
life. 

But our imperfect social development necessitates even 
more that we live by the exchange of sacrifices. The 
wealth of the world, for example, is very inadequate to 
meet even reasonable human needs, and if the economic 
income of even the richest nations were equally divided, 
it would still be inadequate to maintain a proper standard 
of living for each family. But it is socially unwise and 
impossible to divide a society’s economic income equally. 
Hence many must sacrifice and suffer that the life of the 
group may continue and social evolution go on. While 
we rightly strive to lessen this sacrifice, yet no one can 
escape the conclusion that human progress in the past has 
rested, and at present rests, largely upon vicarious suffer¬ 
ing—suffering for the sake of producing a better human 
world. “If we succeed without suffering, it is because 
some one has suffered before us; if we suffer without suc¬ 
cess, it is because some one will succeed after us.” Thus 
the active good will which a social religion must seek to 
develop in men is one which will ever he ready to sacrifice 
self for the sake of service; for we can have an ideal so¬ 
ciety only when every person volunteers to sacrifice him¬ 
self for the good of the whole. 

Says Professor Small: “When men fully understand 
the world, they will understand that Jesus was right about 
sacrifice. They will understand that sacrifice is loss only 
so long as it is exceptional and forced. When we face 


178 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

sacrifice loyally, when we join in a general economy of 
sacrifice, when we refuse knowingly to gain except by in¬ 
tending a gain for somebody else, the balance of the total 
transactions with sacrifice will have passed from the debit 
to the credit side of the world’s account . This is a vicari¬ 
ous world but not as stupidly conceived by the mediaeval 
theologians who located the one vicarious act of impor¬ 
tance in the death on the cross. Life is vicarious in that 
its processes begin and continue and end with exchanges 
of sacrifices, wherever there are moral beings ” 

Here becomes evident the inadequacy of the ideal of 
justice, as ordinarily conceived—that is, “fair dealing”— 
as the basic principle of social life. To be sure, we are 
so far from having achieved justice that to many it seems 
an adequate social ideal. Nor is it to be criticized as in¬ 
consistent with the principle of love. On the contrary, 
justice could not long exist in human relations without 
good will, and active good will is the surest guarantee of 
justice among men. Justice as a social principle is to be 
criticized as inadequate only in the sense that it is socially 
insufficient in such a world as ours. Active good will 
must go further than mere justice in its work of saving 
men and redeeming the world. Men need mercy as well 
as justice. Deep compassion for men, intense social feel¬ 
ing, cannot be satisfied with the virtue of the market 
place, “fair dealing,” but only with the unstinted service 
which we find in the family when the motive is love. And 
such service alone, as we have seen, is adequate to build 
a right social life. It is no mistake, therefore, when the 
New Testament has little to say about justice and much 
to say about love, for justice as a social principle is in¬ 
cluded in and subordinate to the principle of love. 


ESSENTIALS OE A SOCIAL RELIGION 179 

Even more does the inadequacy of self-interest as a 
social principle become evident. Upon this pagan prin¬ 
ciple, as we have seen, our forefathers sought to build their 
political and economic life; and as a result our political 
and economic structures are tumbling about us. The 
question is not one of the legitimacy of self-interest; the 
question is one of the adequacy of self-interest. No one 
would deny that self-interest is legitimate up to a certain 
point; but to allow self-interest to dominate means to 
weaken and negative the social spirit, social unity, social 
co-operation. If it be true that hitherto “the chief mo¬ 
tive power in the development of civilization has been 
intelligent selfishness/’ then that is one reason why our 
civilization is giving us so much trouble. Eor self-interest 
as a dominant motive is bound to result in social failure. 
Even in the economic sphere it is bound ultimately to fail. 
When it dominates, the worker will cease to work, will 
“curtail production,” as soon as his selfish interest is 
satisfied; the employer will “retire” when his “pile” is 
made, unless he has in the meantime acquired an over¬ 
mastering greed. Our world cannot hope to go forward 
to a social life that is harmonious and worth while on such 
a basis. 

It is noteworthy indeed that even in the barbarous 
business of war, while group selfishness is usually ap¬ 
pealed to, the appeal is rarely to the self-interest of the 
individual soldier, but rather to the spirit of unselfish, 
patriotic service. Now, peace has tasks which require 
equal discipline and devotion to unselfish ends for their 
successful completion. It is idle to think that the vic¬ 
tories of peace can be won without the domination of the 
spirit of service and self-sacrifice. This is the whole 
secret of “morale,” whether for peace-time or for war- 


180 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


time. Social science finds self-interest totally inadequate 
as a social principle for the construction of a high, and 
stable civilization. It agrees, then, with social religion 
in condemning self-interest as a dominant motive and 
assigns it only a subordinate position in a properly de¬ 
veloped social life. 

The unselfish service in the building of a better human 
world, which social religion would make the immediate 
end of endeavor for both individuals and groups, how¬ 
ever, leaves plenty of room for all legitimate self-interest. 
No man can serve humanity unless he develops the best 
that is in himself. No man can give unless he has some¬ 
thing to give. The highest possible self-development for 
the sake of service is plainly a corollary of the ideal of 
service. But it is self-development for the sake of service, 
and not self-development as an end in itself. Indeed, the 
latter ideal has no meaning, if we accept the truth taught 
by social science that men necessarily live a collective life 
and achieve lasting good only through the development of 
this collective life. Self-interest subordinated to com¬ 
munity interest and ultimately to the interest of humanity, 
self-development for the sake of aiding the development 
of humanity, is the plain teaching of both social science 
and social religion. 

Nor does social science find this ideal inculcated by 
social religion at all impracticable. Nature has furnished 
man with both egoistic and altruistic impulses. While the 
egoistic impulses of the “natural” man are no doubt the 
stronger, yet which impulses will predominate in the 
character of the mature adult is altogether a matter of 
education. It depends upon which are cultivated from 
childhood up. It depends, then, upon the “morale” of 
the group in which the individual grows to maturity. 


ESSENTIALS OF A SOCIAL RELIGION 181 

Hence, again, the need of a social religion which will 
teach individuals to cultivate a spirit of unselfish service 
—altruism rather than egoism. It must be mainly 
through an essentially religious attitude that any high 
social morale is attained. For reasons which we have 
already fully explained, social religion is the great aid to 
a high social morale. But when a high morale is attained, 
when the social spirit is fully developed, there is no limit 
to the unselfish service of individuals which a group may 
command. If humanitarian religion, then, is given 
proper recognition as a means of social control, there is 
no need of individual and group selfishness running riot 
in our human world. 

In drawing this discussion of the essential principles 
of a completely social or humanitarian religion to a close, 
it is scarcely necessary to point out that the principles 
which we have found to be essential are those of the re¬ 
ligion of Jesus. Service of all men, even of the least, in 
material needs as well as in spiritual, in little things as 
well as in great, springing from love, or a social, brotherly 
spirit, 1 carried, if need be, to the point of complete self- 
sacrifice—such was plainly his teaching. 2 3 Coupled with 
this teaching was a profound conviction of the alienation 
of men from God, of their sinfulness and need of social 
and spiritual redemption. It is no mystery, as we have 
pointed out, why Jesus so taught. The mystery, if any, 
is why the world has not accepted his teaching. For his 

1 The Greek agape , usually translated in the New Testament hy 
the word “love,” meant ethical love, or love enjoined as a duty, or 
active good will. See Thayer’s GreeTc-English Lexicon of the New 

Testament. 

3 Professor Harry F. Ward (The New Social Order, p. 334) sum¬ 
marizes the fundamental social principles of Christianity as three: 
“the value of personality, the necessity of brotherhood, the law of 
service.” 


182 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


social principles are so plainly the only ones by which 
men can satisfactorily live together that they might just 
as well forget the law of gravitation as forget these prin¬ 
ciples. When one forgets the principles of gravitation, 
one must expect some hard bumps. So when our human 
world forgets these principles of right living together, it 
must expect some hard lessons—such as it has been re¬ 
ceiving. 

There is, however, of course this significant difference 
between the working of the principle of gravitation and 
these social principles—that the ignoring of the first prin¬ 
ciple entails immediate punishment experienced by the 
immediate individuals concerned, while the ignoring of 
the latter entails a more or less remote punishment which 
may be experienced by quite other individuals than those 
immediately concerned. This, in part, explains the psy¬ 
chological difficulties of men in learning and understand¬ 
ing social principles. But to the eye of science as well as to 
the eye of religion the remoteness of the results makes no 
difference. To both, the social world, like the physical 
world, is a realm of law. Men reap what they sow in a 
social way, though the men that reap may not he the same 
as those who sowed. 

Nor did Jesus make the mistake of teaching his social 
principles as abstractions. If he had done so, we could 
understand more easily the slowness of men in learning 
them. For men apprehend more quickly the concrete and 
give their loyalty more readily to persons than to abstract 
principles. A social religion which awakens the en¬ 
thusiasm of men must present a vision of an ideal society 
and center about loyalty to a personal leader. Jesus was 
careful to demand this personal loyalty from his followers 
and to present to them a concrete ideal, the Kingdom of 


ESSENTIALS OF A SOCIAL KELIGION 183 

God—a social order in which God’s will should be done— 
which was to be the first thing to be sought by his disci¬ 
ples and the chief object of their desire. 

It has often been said that “personality” is the highest 
term of religion, and that Christianity is “a religion of 
personality.” This is surely correct only in a limited 
sense. We find Jesus saying little concerning individual 
personality, but much concerning his ideal society. While 
he regarded each human soul as of infinite worth, yet it 
was of worth because it was part of an ideal society, a 
part of a spiritual kingdom, which was to come fully 
only when the world was redeemed and God’s will was 
done upon the earth. An ideal human world was to him 
the goal of religion. 1 

It would be quite as correct, then, to say that the 
highest term of religion is “humanity,” and that Chris¬ 
tianity is “a religion of humanity.” Only if such is the 
fact can Christianity be in accord with social science. 
For social science discovers that it is the Great Com¬ 
munity of humanity to which men have to adjust them¬ 
selves, and by which all their values must finally be tested. 
A social religion accordingly must make humanity its 
highest category on the human side and the supreme ob¬ 
ject of loyalty. And this is loyalty to no abstraction. It 
is loyalty to the living human world, as the object of 
redemption. It is loyalty to all in religion, science, art, 
industry, government, or education which works toward 
that redemption. It is loyalty to the best that men have 
realized or aspired to anywhere. It is loyalty to that ideal 
human world which is to be. 

This is surely not far from the thought of Jesus. When 
he asks loyalty to himself and to God it is surely for the 
sake of the redemption of mankind. When he demands 

1 See Chapter III and the various references there cited, also the 
foot-note on the next page. 



184 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


that loving service he rendered to the least of men as unto 
God, it is surely for the sake of the redemption of all men. 
When he commands his followers to seek first the estab¬ 
lishment of the Kingdom of God, this is clearly his 
thought. For this phrase, at one time perverted by theo¬ 
logians to a supermundane or even ecclesiastical mean¬ 
ing, has been shown by modern scholarship on the whole 
to have reference to a social order upon this earth 1 —an 
order, however, not of mere brotherhood—for brothers 
may be co-conspirators in crime—but one in which God 
is acknowledged as father and his will is realized through 
the loving obedience of men to all his laws, especially to 
the laws of mutual love, mutual service, and mutual self- 
sacrifice for the sake of human service. This is the 

1 No social order that is merely external, of course, is meant, but 
one which is an expression of an inner life in harmony with God’s 
will. A purely subjective individualistic interpretation of this phrase, 
however, is scarcely warranted by its historical setting (its back¬ 
ground being the expected Messianic kingdom of Judaism). More 
difficult to deal with is the extreme apocalyptic interpretation of this 
phrase (by Schweitzer and others). Regarding this interpretation, 
Professor Fitch justly says (in Christian Century, March 17, 1021) : 
“All these considerations regarding the way of the appearance and 
actual organization of the kingdom are relatively beside the point. 
Whatever may have been the historical truth or falsity of Jesus’ 
notion of the nature, the time, the method of the coming of the 
kingdom, the deeper question is what was his notion of man which 
underlay it? . . . As one reads the synoptists, there cannot be much 
doubt that Jesus, in his few months of public utterance, proclaimed 
some kind of a social gospel. It is true that he was primarily con¬ 
cerned with individuals rather than organizations, but equally true 
that he selected and trained these individuals as a sort of charter 
members for a society soon to be. It is true that it was thus the 
spiritual redemption of men and women, not the improvement of 
existing institutions, for which he labored. But that was because he 
regarded those present institutions as essentially hopeless and about 
to perish, not because he did not have the vision of a better and 
perfected state. As a matter of fact, he did live for a new and purged 
society. So while by the very nature of his genius he was not so 
much a reformer as a revealer, not an agitator with a plan, but an 
idealist with a vision, nevertheless it was a social vision and a group 
salvation which he foresaw.” For a bibliography on this controversy, 
see Hastings, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics . 


ESSENTIALS OF A SOCIAL RELIGION 185 


Utopia of Jesus—his vision of a perfect human society, 
on which he bade his followers fix their gaze, and to the 
realization of which they should consecrate their lives. 
And to he vital social religion must have such a concrete 
social ideal. 

But this social ideal of Jesus is not a cut and dried 
formula for a fixed social order—for a static human 
world. It is rather a mere outline, based upon funda¬ 
mental social principles, to he filled in by the intelligence 
according to the human needs brought about by special 
situations. And in this it accords with the requirements 
of social science. It makes the work of social science, in 
order to fill in details and to determine methods and 
standards in special instances, not an adventitious and 
external aid to social religion, hut rather an indispensable, 
vital part. To ascertain by careful investigation the needs 
of men in their economic, political, and intimate social 
life thus becomes a necessity of religion. For such in¬ 
vestigation must furnish to social religion guidance in all 
the special problems of human life and alone can render 
religious values concrete and vital. Obviously, a social 
religion must concern itself with ends rather than means, 
and the evaluation of the latter must he left to science. 
Obviously, too, a social end or ideal should be elastic 
enough to leave room for definite knowledge to fill in the 
details. It should be a vision of vitalizing principles 
rather than of a definite organization; and such was 
Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of God. 

Just what social science indicates of the specific organi¬ 
zation needed in our day in the family, in industry, and 
in political life to realize the Christian ideal, we shall 
consider in the immediately following chapters; but one 



186 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

constant implication of our argument remains to be ren¬ 
dered explicit. And that is, that the perfect human society 
which social religion aims to create must necessarily be 
a world-wide society. The events of our day show clearly 
enough that no particularistic society, confined to one 
people, country, or race, can live and perfect its own life 
by itself on our globe. The very idea is self-contradictory 
and facts make it impossible. Any ideal social order that 
is to endure must be developed on a world-wide scale. 
It follows that a social religion must be a missionary re¬ 
ligion, carrying enlightened social values, social patterns, 
civilization as fully as it has developed, to all peoples. 
It was no accident, therefore, that Jesus, if his religion 
was truly social and humanitarian, as we have argued, 
commanded his followers to go and make disciples of all 
nations. 1 Neither is it an accident that historical Chris¬ 
tianity at its best has always been a missionary religion. 
Whatever may have been the mistakes of Christian mis¬ 
sions in the past, as long as the condition of the world 
remains as it is—with races and peoples alienated and 
misunderstanding each other—a positive social religion 
must continue to exalt missionary effort; for its ultimate 
objective must be a redeemed world, and this cannot be 
obtained without the teaching of social and religious truth 
to all peoples and the illustration of that truth by personal 
service and sacrifice. Social religion with its passion for 
the redemption of mankind would suffuse the whole re¬ 
ligious life accordingly with a missionary spirit; and this, 
too, would be the spirit of Jesus. 

Social religion would, in a word, make it the conscious 
end of all men’s lives to have a share with God in the 

1 While many critics regard this command in the first gospel with 
its variant in the second as interpolations, yet they must have been 
a part of the early Christian tradition and would seem to go back to 
some probable sayings of Jesus. 


ESSENTIALS OF A SOCIAL RELIGION 187 


building of a world. Not personal pleasure or power, not 
mere self-development or self-culture, but the creation of 
an ideal human world would thus become, if it were 
accepted, the controlling aim of all men’s endeavor. 1 


i Compare the statement of Professor Hocking (Human Nature md 
Its Remaking , p. 425) : “The destiny of the human will is to co¬ 
operate, in some degree of present awareness with the central power 
of the world; and so far to perceive in present experience the quality 
of ‘union with God.’ In their complete meaning our human 
actions . . . are creative in an actual, but unfinished world.” 


CHAPTER VII 


RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 

A religion adapted to the needs of modern life must 
have a positive and unequivocal doctrine concerning the 
family. If the first business of religion is the production 
of men, then its first concrete social task must be the con¬ 
struction of a family life which is capable of producing 
fully socialized individuals. Just as the primitive Chris¬ 
tian church found in its attempt to reconstruct its world 
that its first task was to create a stable, moral family life, 
so social religion to-day in reconstructing our world must 
begin with this primary group. As the reasons for this 
are not always appreciated by the social and religious 
thinkers of our time, let us see briefly what they are. 

Professor Charles Horton Cooley’s doctrine of the func¬ 
tion of primary groups in human society 1 is almost as 
important in modern social science as Darwin’s doctrine 
of evolution by natural selection in modern biology. Pro¬ 
fessor Cooley shows beyond a doubt that what he calls 
“primary groups” are the primary builders of human 
social life. By primary groups he says he means the 
simple face-to-face groups which are characterized by in¬ 
timate, personal relations, such as especially the family 
and neighborhood. These groups are primary, he shows, 
not simply because they are primitive and universal forms 
of human association, but because they are the primary 

1 Social Organization , Chapters III-V. 

188 


RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 


189 


builders and bearers of the social values of men every¬ 
where and in all ages. They are this, first of all, because 
they are the primary socializing agencies. They first 
stimulate and call forth the expressions of the social in¬ 
stincts; they first build up habits of co-operation; they 
first give rise to social consciousness. It is in the family 
in particular that the individual first learns what social 
life means, gets his earliest development of social im¬ 
pulses and habits, and first learns to say “we.” More¬ 
over, in all stages of social evolution since human life 
began, these primary groups have been the bearers of all 
social traditions. In them the child learns the first lan¬ 
guage and with his language he gets his whole social in¬ 
heritance in a spiritual way. He receives especially from 
his family his ideas, beliefs, and standards concerning in¬ 
dustry, government, law, art, morals and religion. In 
brief, he receives from the family life practically every¬ 
thing which makes him a man as distinct from a brute; 
for human culture, or civilization, as we have already 
seen is a complex built up of acquired habits and these 
habits are intermediated and controlled by a mass of ideas, 
beliefs, and standards, which make up social tradition. 
Inasmuch as the primary groups are the chief carriers of 
this social tradition, they are also the chief carriers of 
culture or civilization. They are usually carriers, more¬ 
over, of the appropriate customs which express the various 
traditions, and hence they impart the social tradition to 
the child, not in an abstract, intellectualistic way, but as 
part of a living, organic whole, oftentimes with social 
compulsion as well as with social illustration. 

The consequence is that the child gets his main social 
education—his fundamental social attitudes and values— 
in the primary groups. Primary groups must accord¬ 
ingly be regarded as the most important educative agencies 


190 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


of human society, so far as the social character of indi¬ 
viduals is concerned. This they must doubtless continue 
to be, for they must always furnish the immediate social 
environment of individuals, and it is this environment 
which is more largely responsible for the social character 
of individuals than all other factors combined. This is 
especially true of the family; for it furnishes the im¬ 
mediate environment of the child during its most tender 
and plastic years. It is, moreover, the natural environ¬ 
ment to which the race has become adjusted through thou¬ 
sands of generations and to which all the child’s instincts 
and capacities are adapted and most readily respond. In 
a word, science finds that the family is the normal en¬ 
vironment of the child and that there is no adequate sub¬ 
stitute for a good home. 

If the first concern of religion is the production of men, 
then social religion would be supremely interested in the 
family, even if there were no deeper reason than its 
moulding of character in the young. But there is a deeper 
reason; and that is that the family life is the original 
fount in society of altruism, of love, which becomes the 
main content, as we have seen, of ethical religion. It is 
in the family that the child develops his altruistic in¬ 
stincts, learns what love means, and, if the family is 
normal, acquires habits of service and self-sacrifice. 
Family affection, in other words, is the natural root of 
altruism in society at large. The amount of altruism in 
society, therefore, has a close relation to the quality of its 
family life. 1 But upon altruism depends largely both 
social order and social progress. We cannot maximize 

1 For elaboration, consult the author’s text, Sociology and Modern 
Social Problems, 1919 Edition, Chapters 1V-VIII, and the references 
there cited. 


RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 


191 


co-operation among men unless we can increase their good 
will as well as their intelligence. Hence religion’s in¬ 
terest in the family must be proportionate to its interest 
in altruism or good will. Family affection is the indis¬ 
pensable root of social religion as well as of altruism. 

The close connection between the family life and re¬ 
ligion among practically all peoples is, therefore, not an 
accident. Both are concerned with the socialization of the 
individual, that is, with overcoming his natural egoism. 
While the family as a purely natural group does this in 
a very limited way, and while social religion attempts 
to do it in a universal way, this should not obscure the 
fact that the very values with which social religion works 
have their origin in the natural affections developed by 
the family. If these values will not work in the family 
life, they surely will not work in society at large. It is 
useless to teach universal love and good will and the 
maximization of co-operation if these cannot be realized 
in the face-to-face group which gave them birth. The 
interest of social religion in the family is not an interest 
in some remote source of its ideals, but rather in it as a 
living generator of altruism even though still for the most 
part to be perfected. 

However, that the family was the original source of the 
chief social values which religion exalts is a fact of the 
greatest social and religious significance. Social religion 
obtained its very concepts, its “patterns,” from the family 
life. It is the great merit of Professor Cooley’s doctrine 
of primary groups that it has revealed clearly to us the 
original sources of our social ideals. Professor Cooley 
has shown that the pattern ideas for all essential human 
relationships come from the experiences and satisfactions 
of primary groups. It is especially the family which by 
its very structure and relationships has furnished the 


192 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


main moral patterns for society at large. 1 Such ideals as 
love, service, self-sacrifice for the sake of service, brother¬ 
hood, motherhood, fatherhood, obviously have been derived 
from experiences in the family. Civilization has taken 
these patterns and attempted to make them work also in 
the larger groups of men. From one point of view all 
human history has been a struggle to transfer the altruism 
and solidarity of the family when at its best to suc¬ 
cessively larger and larger groups of men. The ideal of 
social unity, as Professor Cooley remarks, has been the 
mother of all social ideals; and social unity was first 
realized in the family. 

In brief, the family life has always been social life 
at its maximum. In it human association has been, and 
always will be, at its maximum intensity. In it are gen¬ 
erated both the forces which make for good and those 
which make for evil in our social life. Controlling as it 
does both the birth and rearing of children, it necessarily 
has the chief part in socializing the child and in giving 
him his social traditions, standards and ideals. In fact, 
the family not only reproduces the race, but it reproduces 
human society and human culture. Within it are con¬ 
tinually renewed not only life itself, but the very ideals 
and values by which men live a human life. It is the 
perpetual fountain of youth for the idealism of the race. 
Idealistic social religion especially gets from the family 
the ideals, the very goals, which it sets before men to 
realize in their relations at large. That there is an up¬ 
ward urge in the family life when normal is evidenced, 
therefore, by the fact that it has furnished the main pat¬ 
terns for civilization and for religion. 

Thus the family has been truly the cradle of civilization. 

1 See p. 207. 


RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 


193 


It has furnished the very ideals which men have striven 
to realize in their wider social life. Religion has found 
in it the values which it seeks to universalize. This is 
true, especially, in the case of both Judaism and Chris¬ 
tianity. Judaism, as we have seen, got its lofty moral 
tone from the projection, idealization, and spiritualization 
of the values found in the ancient Jewish family. The 
concepts and phraseology of Judaism can, indeed, be 
understood only through understanding the ancient Jew¬ 
ish family. Christianity only carried the process a step 
further, universalizing such concepts as fatherhood and 
brotherhood, and such ideals as love, service, and sacrifice. 
Historically and psychologically the intimate relations 
between the family and ethical religion are, therefore, 
necessary and inevitable. Destroy one and sooner or later 
you will have destroyed the other. 

It follows that a normal family life for all men must 
be a prime object of a scientific social religion. Yet what 
is the condition of our family life? Nowhere have the 
pagan and destructive forces of our civilization had a 
more disastrous effect. 1 Marriage and the family have 
tended more and more in certain classes to become mere 
matters of individual convenience. Taught by the modern 
romantic novel, the modern sex drama, and the modern 
newspaper, young people have come more and more to 
regard family life as something for personal gratification 
and for personal pleasure. Self-gratification rather than 
social conservation has been made the end of the family 
life. Nothing could illustrate the essential paganism of 
our civilization more clearly than the widespread preva¬ 
lence of this attitude toward the family. Our “mores” 
with reference to marriage and the family are individual- 

1 See also the statements in Chapters I and IV. 


194 THE EECONSTKUCTION OF RELIGION 


istic, they are not socialized. They are not even demo¬ 
cratic; they are rather anarchistic. 

The attempt to build our family life upon a basis of 
self-interest and personal happiness—that is to say, upon 
selfishness—has, of course, been a failure. In the coun¬ 
tries where divorce is free, as in the United States, the 
number of divorces grow T s by leaps and bounds, until un¬ 
stable families threaten at no distant date to predominate. 
In 1916 there were 112,036 divorces granted in the 
United States, but the homes whose bonds were practically 
dissolved and whose life disintegrated by our pagan mores 
in the family must have been nearly as many more. In 
some cities and states there is already one divorce to every 
two marriages. In 1916, it is reliably estimated, there 
were more than 150,000 children involved in these di¬ 
vorces; and as every child needs a good home and two 
parents, the social welfare of many children must have 
suffered. Yet some wonder at the increase of juvenile 
delinquency and adolescent crime among us! 

Not convinced by facts like these that personal hap¬ 
piness is an inadequate basis for the family, we have those 
in plenty who would definitely abandon the standard of 
permanency in family relationships and permit divorce 
to become a private act brought about at any time by 
mutual consent. Thus the ideal of permanent monogamy 
itself appears endangered by our individualism. 

Scientific social religion must meet an issue like this. 
It cannot dodge it. While the family is not an end in 
itself, any more than any other social group, yet it is, as 
we have seen, indispensable to humanity. If social re¬ 
ligion is to teach the service of mankind, and the full 
consecration of individual life to that service, then it must 
condemn unequivocally selfish standards of happiness in 


RELIGION AND EAMILY LIFE 195 

the family. It must ask that the larger life of humanity 
be not impeded in its flow through this institution, and 
that the family life he such as to contribute to that larger 
life. It must, in a word, demand that the family life 
become fully socialized. To this end it must seek (1) the 
subordination of material conditions to the social and 
spiritual values of the family; (2) the subjection of the 
animal nature of man to the service of mankind through 
family relations; (3) the basing of the family life itself 
upon some specific form of unselfish service which is 
peculiarly its own. 

(1) The present instability and demoralization of our 
family life is undoubtedly rooted in the relation of that 
life to material conditions. We have allowed material 
conditions to dominate the family. Business and indus¬ 
try, formerly developed as adjuncts to the family, have 
now become more important in the eyes of many than the 
family life itself. Not only do private employers and 
industrial corporations put interests of their business 
ahead of the domestic interests of their employees, but 
even families themselves in many cases regard their busi¬ 
ness life as much more important than their home life. 
Business and industry, in other words, have come to be 
dominating interests which do not recognize their reason¬ 
able and socially necessary subordination to the family 
for the sake of the higher interests of society. The re¬ 
quirements of the family for the good birth and proper 
rearing of children are sacrificed for the sake of business 
or industry. Thoughtless employers with self-interest 
standards in their business rarely inquire into the home 
life of their employees. Indeed, the wages which they 
pay to their male workers are often quite insufficient for 
the worker to maintain a home and rear a family, and 
even in some cases tend to become merely the wages of 


196 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


single men. The heartlessness of modern business, and 
particularly of some industrial corporations, in employing 
men, women, and children under such conditions and for 
such hours and wages as tend to destroy their home life 
is one of the blackest stains upon modern civilization. 
Social religion must recognize this, and must insist that 
industrial and business considerations shall he subordi¬ 
nated to the considerations of the welfare of parents and 
children in the family group. The labor of immature 
children outside of the family, whether upon the street, 
in factories, in shops, or in stores, under such conditions 
as impede their physical, mental, and moral development, 
must especially be fought by social religion as an unmiti¬ 
gated evil. The drafting of children of school age into 
industry is perhaps as clear an example as we have of the 
materialism and paganism of our civilization. Yet mil¬ 
lions of children in Christian nations who should be in 
school are thus drafted and made parts of the industrial 
machine. 

The labor of women also outside of the home if not 
carefully safeguarded may easily become subversive of the 
higher values of the family. If they are permitted to 
labor under such conditions that normal home life be¬ 
comes practically impossible, then again the family is sac¬ 
rificed to material considerations. Their hours of labor, 
their conditions of labor, and the kind of labor which 
they are permitted to do should all be regulated by the 
consideration of the requirements for a normal home life. 
Even in the case of young unmarried women, this should 
be so; for while they may have no specific home duties, 
yet their life should not be such as to unfit them for the 
home and the family. 

In all cases it must be insisted that the duties of the 
home are paramount to those of business. Adequate 


RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 


197 


wages, reasonable hours, wholesome conditions of work 
in industry are not so much the demands of the self- 
interest of the workers, as of the socialized conscience 
of all men who see human values in their right rela¬ 
tions; for, in a word, they mean that our business and 
industrial life should be organized about our family life 
rather than our family life about our business and in¬ 
dustry. 

Social religion should create a public conscience in 
every community that will demand that not only industry 
but all other material conditions should be such as to favor 
the upbuilding of family life. Scarcely less important 
than the relations of the family to industry are, for 
example, housing conditions and sanitary conditions. Our 
cities too frequently have not been built for homes, but 
for financial returns. In their poorer quarters families 
have been crowded together under such conditions that 
their children have had practically no chance, condemned, 
in effect, by their environment to lives of misery, vice, or 
crime. Social religion will seek to correct all this, not 
by rescuing a few individuals, but by preventing such 
conditions by providing model dwellings, building “garden 
cities,” and so far as practicable making possible the 
ownership of individual homes by families of all classes. 
These material things and all others which social science 
finds to be necessary or desirable for normal family life, 
must become the vital concern of a social religion which 
seeks to create men through the instrumentality of the 
family. 

(2) Equally important is the subjection of the animal 
nature of man to the requirements of a normal family life 
for the sake of the higher interests of society. Men and 
women who suffer from the encroachments of business and 


198 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


industry upon their family life usually readily admit that 
the family should be put ahead of such material inter¬ 
ests. But these same men and women sometimes fail to 
see that their own animal impulses should also be subordi¬ 
nated to the requirements of the family. Sex and sex life 
are made so much of in our literature and on our stage 
that the gratification of sex impulses looms in many minds, 
if not as the chief value, at least as the most imperious 
need of life. Yet to all who have not been swept off their 
feet by pagan individualism, and its resulting animalism, 
this appears as one of the most stupid blunders which 
sociological ignorance permits to exist. While the family 
is founded on the biological fact of sex, its main function 
is not the gratification of sex impulses. That is a short¬ 
sighted illusion indulged in only by those who are desti¬ 
tute of social understanding. Social science finds that 
the chief function of the family, as we have already said, 
is to reproduce both human life and human society "with 
all its values. Sex is the indispensable means for the 
performance of this function; but as soon as we make it 
the end, we revert to a life which is lower even than that 
of the brutes. 

Unscientific ethical religion has long seen this, and for 
ages has attempted the control of sex impulses. But too 
often it has adopted a merely negative and repressive 
policy toward the sex element. 1 A scientific social re¬ 
ligion, while aiming not less at control of this element, 
will adopt a positive and constructive attitude toward it. 
This is the more easy, because science finds this element 
to be the very organic foundation, not simply of the 

1 Christianity has often been accused of taking this attitude, and it 
certainly has often been the attitude of certain branches of the 
Christian church. Even Carpenter, however, who repeats the charge, 
is forced to admit (Pagan and Christian Creeds, p. 180) that there 
is nothing to show that Jesus himself adopted any such attitude. 


RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 


199 


family, but of social life itself, and hence of all the higher 
spiritual life of man. It has been a favorite theory of 
certain writers in the psychology of religion that most of 
the phenomena of religion spring from sex and sex im¬ 
pulses. Science finds at least this much truth in such 
theories, namely, that sexual reproduction is undoubtedly 
the chief organic basis of the social process and its re¬ 
sulting co-operation and altruism. However, it is not 
mere sex, but rather parental care / which is the founda¬ 
tion of intimate social life and of altruism. From this 
root, too, springs, as we have already seen, the social 
phases of religion. 

Nature has used sex, in a word, as a chief means for 
the higher evolution of life. Surely human intelligence 
also can make sex to serve the higher interests of the race. 
Science shows clearly enough how this can be done. It 
is by controlling sex impulses in the interest of a sane 
and wholesome family life. As long as repressive con¬ 
trol was regarded as an end in itself, it was impossible 
for religion to take a constructive attitude toward sex. 
But as soon as such control is seen to be for the sake of 
the family and for the service of humanity through the 
family, then controlled sex impulses are welcomed as a 
basis of family affection, and the social religious ideal 
becomes, not celibacy, but a pure and lasting family life. 
Chastity for both the married and the unmarried takes 
on a new meaning—a social meaning—and it is seen to 
be preeminently the virtue by which men and women can 
live together on a human plane, and it is honored as such. 
As a necessary social virtue it is held to apply to both 
men and women equally. The whole social life is purified 


1 See Sociology and Modern Social Problems , 1919 Edition, p. 95 ; 
also Introduction to Social Psychology, p. 37. See p. 204 of this 
chapter. 


200 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


and ennobled, because sex is subordinated to the family, 
and not family life to sex. In a word, sex is made to 
serve the higher values of the social life instead of being 
merely repressed. Thus social religion as well as social 
science will find in sex a potential basis for the highest 
social values. 

Such control of sex impulses in the interest of the 
family will mean their control in the interest of the child 
and the race. Modern biology has shown the extreme im¬ 
portance of heredity to man; and obviously the control of 
heredity must come through the control of sex relations. 
The modern science of eugenics is as far from endorsing 
promiscuity in sex relations as ethical religion itself. 
Lax standards of sex morality would make impossible the 
realization of eugenic ideals. Eugenics demands that we 
control marriage in the interests of the race, but this in 
turn implies the control of all sex relations. If eugenics 
is ever to become practical, it can be only through the 
development of much higher standards of sex morality 
than we have yet attained. For it implies the triple 
control of sex in the interest of the family, the child, and 
the race, though upon rational analysis these are seen all 
to mean the same thing. It implies that marriages shall 
be based upon the good health, good character, and the 
intelligence of the two stocks concerned. It implies that 
families that have these socially valuable qualities as 
hereditary endowments and have in addition a normal en¬ 
vironment should feel a social obligation to produce more 
than their proportion of children. It implies negatively 
that those who are not normal in their hereditary endow¬ 
ments should refrain from marriage, and that those who 
for any reason do not marry should lead lives of conti¬ 
nence. Finally, eugenics implies that all who are so ab- 


RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 


201 


normal that they cannot be controlled by the moral stand¬ 
ards of society should be segregated in institutions and 
supported at public expense. 

It is a counsel of perfection which modern science has 
given us in the doctrines of eugenics; but like all such 
counsels it is socially valuable and is obviously closely 
allied with idealistic social religion. If eugenics were 
ever made the basis of a code of minute legislative pre¬ 
scriptions regarding marriage and reproduction, doubt¬ 
less it would become an intolerable tyranny. But as the 
basis for social ideals regarding marriage and the birth 
of children, it is invaluable. Social religion, not less than 
eugenics, is interested in securing wise marriages and in 
making sure that every child is well-born. Social religion, 
too, should emphasize the social service which parents 
render to society in the birth and rearing of normal chil¬ 
dren. It, too, should set up the ideal that the physically 
strong, the intelligent, and the economically fortunate 
families should have more than their proportionate share 
of children, because the children born in such families 
will obviously have the best chance to grow up into useful 
members of society. Thus a truly social religion will 
encourage marriage and parenthood among the socially 
normal. It will insist that no service to society which 
men ordinarily render is greater than the birth and rear¬ 
ing of normal children in a normal home, and that this 
is the production of men in the primary sense. It will 
make the birth of children in the family welcome in pro¬ 
portion as there is health and strength and economic 
means to give them a fair start in life, and it will con¬ 
demn the selfish individualism which shirks the obliga¬ 
tions of parenthood. Finally, it will seek to create in the 
young a eugenic conscience which will safeguard marriage 
and the birth of children. Only thus can the ideals of 


202 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

eugenics stand any chance of realization, as Sir Francis 
Galton, the founder of the movement, himself recognized. 
Here again we see the essential identity of interest of ap¬ 
plied social science and social religion. 

But a eugenic conscience and eugenic ideals are not 
enough in themselves to assure that sex impulses will be¬ 
come socialized and used always and only for the good 
of mankind. In this age of medicinal prophylactics and 
widespread knowledge of means of preventing conception 
insidious temptations present themselves to many, and 
the broader view is necessary. To the ignorant vice and 
immorality appear to have been rendered “safe.” Unless 
the whole level of sex life is lifted to a rational social 
plane and sex is made to contribute to the higher social 
values—to the nobler affections, sentiments, and emotions 
—there still is danger of sex impulses brutalizing char¬ 
acter and conduct. 

To avoid this danger social religion must unite with 
social science in demanding scientific ethical instruction 
for the young in all matters pertaining to sex. Such in¬ 
struction, if vitally related to social obligations in the 
family and in the community, would save the young from 
many pitfalls. Ignorance in this matter, as in other social 
matters, is probably one of the chief sources of present 
social evils, and in no case is it a protection to society. 
But such instruction, to be socially effective, must be 
rightly given with the proper ethical background. Sociol¬ 
ogy rather than physiology is the basis of the higher sex 
moralities. It is absurd to think that sex morality can 
be inculcated upon the basis of selfishness, since no social 
order, as w r e have seen, can long endure upon such a basis. 
The control of sex impulses must rather be sought through 
the development of social conscience and an altruistic 
social spirit in the young. Hence idealistic social religion 


RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 


203 


should be joined with science in all sex education. It 
alone can give an enduring motive for the self-control 
which will result in the highest social control. If religion 
sought the aid of social science, and if science sought the 
aid of social religion, this age-long problem would no 
longer prove impossible of solution. The purity of life 
already attained by the more highly socialized elements 
of society would be found to be possible for all normal 
men and women. The venereal diseases which so disgrace 
our civilization would be more easily stamped out than 
the measles; for chastity in both men and women and a 
resulting pure family life would be found to be their 
effectual preventives. An enlightened social world two 
centuries hence may wonder, indeed, why we had not 
already accomplished this; and the only answer is that 
both our science and our religion are still too imperfectly 
developed on the social side. 

(3) But most of all, must social religion demand a 
complete change in our “mores” with reference to mar¬ 
riage and the family. Instead of regarding these as mat¬ 
ters of individual convenience, social religion must teach 
that they are social responsibilities and also opportunities 
for human service. The whole family life must be put 
upon an ethical instead of a selfish basis. Marriage itself 
should come to symbolize, both in the minds of the con¬ 
tracting parties and of the community, full consecration 
of life to the service of the race. Its basis should be not 
mere fancy or passion, nor even romantic affection, but 
an unselfish love which leads to a full and free consecra¬ 
tion of life to the promotion not only of the welfare and 
happiness of the parties themselves, but also of society. 
The bonds of such a marriage must be not fear or coercive 
authority, but love and respect and the sense of social 


204 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


obligation. If the ideal of the service of humanity is to 
dominate marriage and the family, however, society in 
general must value the service of humanity through mar¬ 
riage and the family, and must make it possible for each 
normal individual to have such a family life. 

But such a high social valuation of marriage and the 
family cannot be attained and kept unless there is some 
specific service which the family renders to society that 
is of the utmost social value. What is that service ? Is it 
to the community? Indirectly, yes; but it cannot be to 
the physical, economic, and moral welfare of the com¬ 
munity at large, because other institutions could perform 
such service better than the family. Is it simply to min¬ 
ister to the comfort, happiness, and welfare of the mar¬ 
ried pair? This would be, however, such a narrow and 
selfish service that it would warrant no higher social 
valuation of the family than is already customary. In¬ 
deed, our low valuation of marriage and the family is 
precisely due to the fact that so many people consider 
these to be institutions whose chief end is to serve private 
individual comfort, happiness, and welfare. 

But social science reveals that the chief end of mar¬ 
riage and the family is the child. The chief service which 
the family is called upon to render to society, accordingly, 
is the service of the child. The child, in a word, is the 
center of gravity in normal family life—the child that is 
born or that may be born. It is the child and its needs 
which lifts marriage and the family from the basis of 
selfishness and makes it possible to put them both upon 
the basis of the widest possible service to humanity. For 
the child stands for society and the race. The service of 
the child is preeminently the service of the race. If 
humanity is to continue to live and to work out a better 



RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 205 

future, the welfare of every child is of the highest im¬ 
portance. 

In the great structure of civilization the one concrete 
problem which looms everywhere as of supreme impor¬ 
tance is the problem of child welfare; for there is oppor¬ 
tunity to improve human life only as new lives enter to 
make a fresh start. Child welfare is the central problem 
of civilization and social science shows that it is impos¬ 
sible of solution without a normal family life. It is this 
which gives the family, as we have already seen, its com¬ 
manding importance in human society. The child’s 
heredity, its physical care, its early mental education, and 
its moral character are all largely determined by its 
family life. The attempt to work out the problems of 
child welfare without reference to the family, social sci¬ 
ence finds, is as absurd as the attempt to make perpetual 
motion without a perpetual source of energy. The first 
condition of child welfare is a normal home life, for the 
reasons which we pointed out at the beginning of the 
chapter and because all other child-care agencies which 
may be devised by philanthropy are inadequate substitutes 
for a normal home. If humanity is to progress, there¬ 
fore, the whole of human society has to he so organized 
as to maximize the number of normal homes in which 
children can be properly cared for and given a fair start 
in life . 

Social religion, accordingly, would put the little child 
in the midst. It would make our social values concerning 
marriage and the family center about the child. All the 
questions which men raise regarding the family would 
then find answer. It would be evident, for example, that 
only a stable home, one which is characterized by endur¬ 
ing, unselfish love and loyalty can best serve the interests 


206 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

of the child. It would be evident that the atmosphere of 
the home should be one of altruism, illustrating in the 
mutual devotion of its members that spirit of unselfish 
service which is the most effective means of educating the 
child socially and religiously. It would be evident that 
the family should be dissolved only when the interests 
of the child demand such a dissolution. Upon such a 
basis there could be little talk of divorce being in accord¬ 
ance with ethical ideals. It would be recognized as like 
surgery in medicine—an attempt to deal with a desperate 
situation which cannot be dealt with in any other way 
than by a last-resort remedy. 

But with a truly social religion men and women would 
no longer think of entering upon marriage with the idea 
of possible divorce; they would look upon marriage as a 
religious, because a necessary social, bond. Nor would 
they ask for the right of divorce by mutual consent. They 
would recognize that the rights of society and of the child 
are in all cases paramount. Nor would couples to whom 
no children happened to be born ask for any different 
treatment than those with children. They would recog¬ 
nize that social standards have to apply to all alike and 
cannot be based upon those exceptional cases in which 
there are no children in the family either by birth or by 
adoption. In short, a social religion in harmony with 
scientific social knowledge would reinstate the ideal of the 
family as a lasting union, a community, whose bonds 
should be broken only by death. 

It would do so not only because the responsibilities 
assumed in family relations normally end only with death, 
but also because sound social science finds the social value 
of all institutions not in their immediate effect upon per¬ 
sonal comfort and happiness, hut rather in their educative 
influence upon personality. And it is evident that if we 


RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 207 

want a social personality characterized by tolerance and 
good will—that will minimize conflict and maximize co¬ 
operation in all the relations of life—we must have a 
stable family life as our standard. Only with such a 
family life can there be the highest possibilities of de¬ 
veloping altruism in the character of the individual. Only 
such a family life can help to build a better human world 
which will be increasingly based upon love. While the 
great concrete end of the family is the service of the child, 
the satisfaction of its physical wants and the development 
of its social character, yet this implies that the larger 
social purpose of the family is the creation of an ideal 
social world. It is because it is the primary agency for 
the accomplishment of this purpose that social religion 
must have such a supreme interest in the family. With¬ 
out the family the flame of spirituality could not be kept 
burning in our world; and in proportion as the family 
is permeated by unselfish love, and so is made pure and 
stable, the flame of spirituality will mount higher. 1 

It is scarcely necessary to add that in stating the doc¬ 
trines regarding the family which social science requires 
of a social religion, we have outlined what is essentially 
the Christian ideal. The religion of Jesus is character¬ 
ized by the central place which it gives to the child and 
to the family. It is, indeed, as we have seen essentially 
an idealization and projection of the social values experi¬ 
enced in the family, such as love, service, sacrifice, brother¬ 
hood. These values could scarcely serve as patterns for 
the relations of men at large if the family failed to illus¬ 
trate them. Love as a social principle finds the initial 

1 See Professor Felix Adler’s Marriage and Divorce, especially 
Chapter I. It is noteworthy that this clear presentation of the 
Christian ideal of marriage and the family is made by one outside of 
the Christian church. 



208 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


test of its practicability in the family group, and this 
Jesus seems to recognize when he demands that husbands 
shall not put away their wives, or wives their husbands, 
and marry again. The relations of husband and wife, he 
seems to teach, are not different in principle from the re¬ 
lations between parents and children. They are provided 
for in the nature of things and involve responsibilities 
which when once assumed cannot normally be laid aside. 

It is Jesus’ teaching concerning the child, however, 
which helps us to understand clearly his teaching con¬ 
cerning the family. He makes the child the center of 
gravity in his system of concrete values not less clearly 
than does modern social science. So great is the value 
of the child, he tells his disciples, that an offense to a 
child is among the worst of sins, while the slightest 
service, even the giving of a cup of cold water, is a re¬ 
ligious act of the highest significance. He tells his disci¬ 
ples further that whoever receives a little child in his 
name receives him, and that to children belongs the king¬ 
dom of God. It is no wonder with such teachings that 
the early church took up child care as one of its primary 
social functions. Clearly also these teachings of Jesus 
concerning the social and spiritual importance of the child 
must be correlated with his teachings concerning marriage 
and divorce. These latter have often been interpreted as 
resting upon ethical rigorism, but when they are corre¬ 
lated with his teachings regarding human relations in 
general and regarding the child in particular, they are 
seen rather to be an expression of his religious humani- 
tarianism. 

However, it is not our purpose here, or anywhere, to 
attempt a critical interpretation of Jesus’ teaching, but 
rather merely to point out that a humanitarian religion 
based upon the principles of social science is funda- 


RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 209 

mentally in harmony with the Christianity of the Gos¬ 
pels. The family is society in miniature. If men can¬ 
not be socialized in those primary relations of life which 
it represents, it is idle to think that they can be in the 
wider, more complex relations of larger groups. The 
ideals of love, loyalty, service, sacrifice, forgiveness, and 
conciliation must be found adequate controls over the be¬ 
havior of men in the family if they are to be found prac¬ 
ticable in the larger relations of life. The indispensable 
preliminary to a Christian society is a Christian family 
life. 


CHAPTER VIII 


RELIGION AND ECONOMIC LIFE 

A religion adapted to the needs of human life must 
have a scientifically sound and unequivocal doctrine con¬ 
cerning the material conditions of life—especially con¬ 
cerning those conditions under which men live and work, 
that we term “economic.” Social religion must fearlessly 
oppose anything immoral or unjust in the economic system 
in which men must work and live, because such evil will 
make impossible the realization of a satisfactory moral 
character in individuals and of a satisfactory order in 
society. Injustice in these fundamental conditions of life 
is bound to have effects in the religious and moral life. 
While there is no scientific warrant for a doctrine of com¬ 
plete economic determinism, yet all progress in the social 
sciences has served to reveal more and more clearly the 
importance of the economic element both in individual 
and in social life. The social environment as a whole, both 
material and spiritual, science shows, plays the prepon¬ 
derant part in the determination of the moral character 
of the mass of individuals. Now, economic conditions are 
the chief material elements in the social environment. It 
is idle, therefore, to think that religious ideals can be 
realized if economic conditions hostile to those ideals are 
permitted to exist. 1 

1 It surely needs no argument to show, e. g., that food is so funda¬ 
mental in human life and the conditions under which it can be 
secured are so precarious and complicated that religion must play a 
leading part in controlling these conditions if it is going to redeem 
the lives of men. See above p. 164. 

210 


RELIGION AND ECONOMIC LIFE 211 

Now if the aim of social religion is the production of 
men, of the values connected with human personality, 
then one of its first tasks must he to help devise a system 
of business and industry, of work and material reward, 
which will be in harmony with that aim. Religion dare 
not be merely a system of abstract ideals and values out 
of relation with real life. That, as we have seen, is one 
of the causes of its social failure. It must be a set of prac¬ 
tical attitudes toward practical problems. It is idle to 
talk of the kingdom of God, of an ideal social order in 
which the divine will is realized, as long as an essentially 
pagan economic system persists. The economic life must 
become suffused with the highest spiritual values; it must 
he dominated by humanitarian ethics, if ever such an 
order is to be realized. Such an economic life is not im¬ 
possible. Yet it can become general only if the economic 
system he such as to make possible a normal life for all, 
only if it emphasizes the values in men rather than the 
values in things, respects personality, and serves the phys¬ 
ical and moral welfare of all. Such a system must mani¬ 
festly be not only in accord with the principles of liberty 
and justice, but such as to maximize co-operation and to 
minimize hostility and conflict among all men. It is 
clearly the duty of religious people to make the realiza¬ 
tion of such an economic order a prime object of the 
practical religious life. 1 


1 Steps have been taken in this direction by leading denominations 
by the adoption of “The Social Creed of the Churches” and similar 
declarations (see appendix). Concerning these, Professor Ward (The 
New Social Order, p. 350) well remarks: “The meaning of these 
programs has not yet been perceived by millions of persons belonging 
to the organizations which have written them.” This is seen in such 
incidents as that at Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1920, when the Y. W. C. A. 
was refused support by business men’s organizations because it had 
adopted “The Social Creed of the Churches.” In general, religion has 
been too “other-worldly” to concern itself until very recently with 
economic conditions. See Chapter III of this book. 


212 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


Yet no phase of life has come less definitely under the 
influence of ethical religion than the economic. It is in 
the economic sphere that we expect selfishness to he most 
in evidence; and it was the observation of the economic 
life of the nineteenth century which built up the phi¬ 
losophy which proclaimed that self-interest rules all men 
in all things, and even that action upon any other basis 
than self-interest is inconceivable. It is in the economic 
sphere, in a word, that the baldest selfishness, greed, and 
inconsiderateness of others is to be found. We have al¬ 
ready seen how even at the present time, in a part of our 
business and financial world, predatory pagan standards 
prevail almost as they did before the Christian movement 
began. 1 Rich and poor, employer and employee, alike too 
often hold that they are entitled to all they can get and 
can keep, regardless of the service rendered. Instead of 
seeking only just compensation for service rendered, both 
working man and business man too often seek to get as 
much as they can and to give as little in return as pos¬ 
sible. Indeed, it is not too much to say that the passion 
to get “something for nothing” dominates modern eco¬ 
nomic life, in the sense that it gives color and tone to 
its most characteristic features. 

In a word, we have an economic system, as one able 
economist has pointed out, which emphasizes rights, privi¬ 
leges, and rewards, instead of functions, obligations, and 
service. 2 The result is that instead of a fair exchange of 

1 See Chapter IV. 

2 Tawney, The Acquisitive Society, Chapter II. Similarly, Professor 
Small has pointed out that in the economic process as described by 
the classical economists—and they were describing actual facts— 
wealth was the end and men were the means. While economic theory 
has become more humanistic, economic practice too often has remained 
as the classical economists described it, which is proof, not that they 
were right in their theories, but that we are still wrong in our 
practices. 


RELIGION AND ECONOMIC LIFE 213 


goods and services being sought by all, the greatest pos¬ 
sible private gain is usually sought; and this works out 
in practice, not in that equal exchange of services which 
we have described as the very essence of happy and har¬ 
monious social living, but in a tendency to exploitation. 
Naturally it is the weak who get exploited under such 
circumstances. The employer who makes private profit his 
standard considers it merely “good business” to hire labor 
in as cheap a market as can be found, and to pay the 
laborer only what is barely necessary. Regarding labor 
as a “commodity,” he naturally treats the laborer as a 
“hand,” and regards him simply as a means to the pro¬ 
duction of so much wealth. Similarly the merchant or 
corporation that makes private profit the standard con¬ 
siders it fair to get out of the consumer as much as pos¬ 
sible. 

The consequence is that society is divided not simply 
into normal economic classes, but into abnormal classes, 
exploiters and exploited, who regard each other with sus¬ 
picion and hostility. Our civilization, as a further con¬ 
sequence, is forever on the verge of class war, and even 
at best is so divided into distrustful and egoistic groups 
that no high efficiency is possible. Even at the present 
moment when our world so sorely needs to be united in 
the tasks of restoration, rehabilitation, and reconstruction, 
instead of being united in the work of life, over one-half 
of our potential energy is dissipated through misunder¬ 
standing, mistrust, and conflict. 

Like slavery, the system is equally bad for the privi¬ 
leged and the non-privileged. The economically fortunate 
often live luxuriously, and without serious labor of their 
own, upon the proceeds of the labor of others. Hence, 
they too frequently develop selfish, arrogant, unsympa¬ 
thetic social attitudes, and devote themselves to lives of 


214 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

sensuality and self-indulgence. The man who labors, on 
the other hand, is too often degraded, not only because 
through exploitation, he remains poor and ignorant, but 
because he is in a class which is looked down upon and 
which has but little chance to rise. He either loses ambi¬ 
tion to rise, or, accepting the materialistic standards of 
the rich, develops an envious, sullen, shirking attitude 
and renders the least service he can—if indeed he does 
not become a violent enemy of the existing order. It is 
thus that modern society has become a divided household. 

Eminent economists and statisticians have often set 
forth the main economic facts of the situation. They 
have pointed out that even in the United States “two per 
cent of the population possesses the lion’s share,” that is, 
almost sixty per cent of the wealth, while “the poorest 
two-thirds of the people own but a petty five or six per 
cent of the wealth,” 1 and nearly one-half of all families 
have no taxable property. Of the poorer half of the popu¬ 
lation, a large fraction (in the United States, at least 
ten per cent of the total population even in prosperous 
times) have not sufficient income to provide themselves 
with the necessities of life, and live constantly, as we say, 
below the poverty line. 2 This is not surprising when we 
learn that “it is certain that at least one-third and pos¬ 
sibly one-half of the families of wage earners employed 
in manufacturing and mining earn in the course of the 
year less than enough to support them in anything like 
a comfortable and decent condition.” 3 Similarly we find 

1 King: The Wealth and Income of the People of the United States, 
pp. 80-82. This book is invaluable for the study of the problem of 
the distribution of wealth. 

1 Parmelee, Poverty and Social Progress , p. 105. 

' Report Commission on Industrial Relations , Senate Doc. No. 415, 
04th Cong., p. 22. 


RELIGION AND ECONOMIC LIFE 215 


that in 1915 careful study showed that more than one- 
half of the families of the United States received less than 
$800 as an annual income, although that amount was esti¬ 
mated by experts about the same time to be the minimum 
amount necessary to support an average family. While 
wages rose greatly during the war, especially in the skilled 
occupations, the cost of living rose so much that in 1919 
experts estimated that the minimum amount necessary to 
support a family of five was, in many places in the United 
States, above $2,000 a year. The rewards of capital 
meanwhile had so increased that by 1917, the banner year 
for profits, capital received in profits, in addition to in¬ 
terest, more than twenty-five per cent of the entire amount 
added to the value of the products of industry by labor, 
though in ordinary times profits usually amount to less 
than half that per cent. 1 The net result of the war seems 
indeed to have been to turn more wealth into the hands 
of the fortunate few, while the economic position of the 
masses, in the United States as well as in Europe, has 
probably been rendered more precarious. 

Accompanying this poverty and low wages there have 
been often too long hours of work, the labor of children 
and married women outside the home, and much unem¬ 
ployment. It has been shown that the wage earners in 
the principal industries in the United States lose on the 
average from one-fifth to one-fourth of their working time 
during a normal year. If this is so, high wages by the 
day or the week may not look so high when the loss of 
time through unemployment is taken into account. In 
periods of industrial depression unemployment frequently 
rises to staggering proportions. During the summer of 
1921 the number of the unemployed in the United States 

1 Friday, Profits, Wages, and Prices, pp. 124-130. 


216 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


Was variously estimated to be from four million to six 
million. Much of this unemployment is simply due to 
industrial maladjustments in the relations of employer 
and employee. Indeed, a majority of the waste connected 
with our industrial system seems to be a direct result of 
the basis of selfishness upon which business is carried on. 
Strikes and lockouts, low wages and long hours, exploita¬ 
tion and sabotage, friction and bickering of every sort, 
are certain evidences at least that the spirit of co-opera¬ 
tion does not rule in our economic life. And it is from 
these things that the greatest losses in time, in energy, in 
wages, and in productiveness in industry spring. 

Indeed, it is not so much the poverty and inequalities 
produced by our present economic system which lead to 
its condemnation by the most thoughtful as the ineffi¬ 
ciency and conflict which result from it. Says a leading 
economist, 1 “There is one, and only one, test by which 
to measure the soundness of any movement in social life, 
in industry, or in politics. Does it make for peace or 
for violence ? Does it extend the field of voluntary agree¬ 
ment among free citizens, or does it extend the field of 
authority? Does it enlarge the opportunities of those 
who inspire fear, or does it enlarge the opportunities of 
those who prosper through good will ?” Judged by this 
test, which we accept, our present economic system must 
surely be found wanting, for it breeds misunderstand¬ 
ings, hatreds, and violence. Moreover, fear more often 
than love is the motive to which it appeals, and too often 
it forgets to safeguard the liberty of the individual. In 
its ignoring of personality and of human brotherhood, in 
its too frequent denial of liberty and justice and social 
responsibility, in its emphasis upon self-interest, and in 
its scouting of love and of service for the common welfare 

1 Professor T. N. Carver, of Harvard University. 


RELIGION AND ECONOMIC LIFE 217 

as possible and practicable economic motives, it is essen¬ 
tially a pagan system and must be fearlessly opposed as 
such by all who wish a Christian world, that is to say a 
world of peace, good will and universal co-operation. 

No revolution in social and industrial organization will 
remedy the evils of such an economic system; for its evils 
are not external, but in its spirit and inner nature. Mod¬ 
ern capitalism has often been accused of being pagan in 
its ethics, and the most searching, most impartial, most 
scientific investigation has practically substantiated this 
charge. 1 Indeed we could not well expect it to be other¬ 
wise in our semi-pagan civilization. The problem is not 
one merely of a change in an external order. A change 
which is nothing less than climatic, as we have already 
said, is needed in our whole social and economic life if the 
primacy of human values in industry is to be effectively 
recognized. The whole spirit of our business and finan¬ 
cial world must be changed—our economic “mores” as a 
whole must be transformed. Doubtless this means cor¬ 
responding changes in our methods of business and in our 
industrial organization; but the change in the spirit and 
purpose of our economic life must come first, or else mere 
external changes may prove but a new means of exploita¬ 
tion. On the other hand, old forms of business and in¬ 
dustry may make impossible the success of a new, more 
Christian, more humane spirit in our economic life. Evi¬ 
dently here, as everywhere in social life, changes in inner 
spirit and aim must be accompanied by changes in ex¬ 
ternal methods and order if any lasting betterment is to 

1 See Tawney (op. cit.). For a brief, dispassionate statement, see 
Professor J. H. Tuft’s article on “Ethics of Capitalism” in Dictionary 
of Religion and Ethics (published by The Macmillan Company, 1921). 


218 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


be effected. What then are the changes necessary? And 
how may they be brought about ? 

It is certain that while social science may indicate the 
means and even outline the concrete details of a new 
order, social religion—enthusiasm for humanity—must 
furnish the driving motive if ever such order is to be 
realized. The task is of such magnitude that it requires 
the combined resources of science and religion. Humani¬ 
tarian enthusiasm and the ethical ideals which it inspires 
may guide up to a certain point; hut adequate scientific 
knowledge can alone furnish the means of solving the real 
difficulties of the problem. Here we must agree with 
those religious conservatives who hold that religion has 
no right to meddle with social problems without adequate 
knowledge based upon scientific investigation of facts. 
We must agree because manifold experience in the past 
has shown that mere good intentions will not do. But on 
the other hand, social religion cannot stand aside when 
the welfare of human beings is at stake. Evidently there 
is only one way out of the dilemma, and that is for social 
religion to ally itself with science. Religious people can 
get the facts if they wish them, and any worthwhile social 
religion will insist that it is a supreme duty to secure 
the facts concerning every social situation which affects 
the welfare of human beings and to give them full pub¬ 
licity. The absolute dependence of social religion upon 
social science for concrete guidance here emerges. Re¬ 
ligion must tahe sides on questions which affect human 
icelfare; but, when tbe question is a controverted one, 
it can do so intelligently only after the full facts are 
before it. Before social religion can guide aright, for 
example, in the great industrial and economic problems 
of the present, it must square itself with the facts of eco¬ 
nomic science, and build its program for the redemption 


RELIGION AND ECONOMIC LIFE 219 

of our economic life in accordance with scientific princi¬ 
ples. The social ideal which religion sets up must be 
within the limits of the economically possible. 

What then are the limitations 1 which social and eco¬ 
nomic science impose upon the religious ideal? To dis¬ 
cuss this matter fully would be to review all the princi¬ 
ples of modern sociology and economics. It will suffice 
for our purposes to point out four limitations which 
science imposes upon ethical and religious ideals in their 
relations to the economic life. In the first place anything 
like pure communism is impossible in civilized society. 
Even so-called primitive communism restricted the prog¬ 
ress of the peoples who practised it and was largely re¬ 
sponsible for such peoples remaining in an undeveloped 
condition. In the complex conditions of modern society 
communism is much more impossible. Every experiment 
in a communistic organization of society for the last two 
thousand years has failed and the recent experiment in 
Russia can have no other outcome. The most elementary 
understanding of the principles of sociology and eco¬ 
nomics points to this conclusion. Individual functions and 
functioning, individual rights and responsibilities, divi¬ 
sion of labor, control over production and consumption, 
economic rewards and penalties, all presuppose private 
property in a complex society. Property and personality, 
in other words, are closely linked in their development, 
and so also property and civilization. Private ownership 

1 Broadly viewed, economic truths, of course, are not “limitations” 
upon social religion, but are rather aids in defining a practicable 
social ethics upon a basis of facts. They are, therefore, opportunities, 
if rightly utilized, for religion to be of the largest service to men. 
Strictly speaking, then, science does not place limitations upon 
religion (unless calling it from the world of dreams to the world of 
realities be a limitation), but comes to its aid by giving a basis of 
scientific facts and laws for a social ethics. 


220 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


in some sense has been, and is, as necessary for human 
society of any developed type as the private family. So¬ 
cieties in order to have any high degree of efficiency must 
harness about equally the egoistic and altruistic impulses 
of human nature. It has often been said that private 
property develops only the egoistic impulses; but it is 
evident that if rightly used it may develop equally the 
altruistic impulses. Idealistic morality, indeed, pre¬ 
supposes private property. Any one who has read the 
Ten Commandments carefully knows that private prop¬ 
erty is written in between their lines. 1 In brief the in¬ 
stitution of private property has been one of the founda¬ 
tions of all culture and of all progress, and the tradition 
of private property, purified of pagan abuses, must be 
preserved as one of the cornerstones of our civilization. 

While communism is impossible on any large scale in 
our society, still this does not mean that something of 
tho spirit of communism may not be necessary for the 
highest development of civilization. In the primitive com¬ 
munism of the Eskimo, anthropologists tell us, a whole 
village of Eskimo may perish from starvation but a single 
Eskimo never, because as long as any food remains it will 
be divided, when necessity demands, equally among all 
the members of the group. Surely something of this 
spirit must pervade every human group that is rightly 
organized and has the right standards of living. The 
private property which the Eskimo have (and they have 
considerable) does not prevent this in their case, nor 
should it prevent it in ours. Again, while communism 
as a form of economic organization is impossible, this 
does not mean that public ownership is thereby con- 

1 Compare the similar statement by Professor Small in Between 
Eras from Capitalism, to Democracy , p. 366. The book is a strong 
indictment of modern capitalism with a plea for the subordination' 
of property rights to human values. 


RELIGION AND ECONOMIC LIFE 22i 

demned. Public and private ownership have existed side 
by side through all the centuries of human history, their 
proportions varying according to the circumstances and 
needs of the social life, and they will doubtless continue 
so to exist. 1 There may be a large place for public owner¬ 
ship even if communism is impossible. These questions 
will be taken up again later. 

Another limitation which modern social and economic 
science places upon religious ideals is the perception of 
the impossibility of the abolition of social and economic 
classes. Classes exist in society not only because of the 
natural differences among men, but even more because of 
the necessity of the division of labor in any developed 
social life. Classes based upon artificial distinctions are 
to be condemned and cannot be justified by any of the 
facts of social science. But classes based upon natural 
differences in ability and talent or upon necessary divi¬ 
sions of labor in a complex social order are something 
wholly different. No civilized society has been able to 
dispense with such classes, and no civilized society pos¬ 
sibly can. Equality of rights and opportunities is theo¬ 
retically possible in society, but not equality of functions 
and rewards, unless we give a moral rather than a prac¬ 
tical and economic sense to such terms. 

The attempt to abolish economic classes in civilized 
society, in particular, is impossible. It is impossible be¬ 
cause the fundamental economic classes are based upon 
the nature of human industry and its necessary division 
of labor. There must be, for example, the class of pro¬ 
ducers of raw materials, which roughly coincides with the 

1 See Ely, Property and Contract in Their Relations to the Dis¬ 
tribution of Wealth; also Property , Its Duties and Rights, by Pro¬ 
fessor Hobkouse, Professor Bartlet, Dr. A. J. Carlyle and others. 


222 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


agricultural producers, or the farming class. There must 
also be a class to work up these raw materials into manu¬ 
factured products, which roughly in our society coincides 
with factory laborers. In any highly developed society 
there must also be a class who undertake and direct busi¬ 
ness enterprises, which class roughly coincides in our 
society, with the business men. Finally in a highly 
developed society there must be a class who render cer¬ 
tain expert services and who have special charge of the 
higher interests of culture on its spiritual side. This class 
roughly coincides in our civilization with the professional 
classes. These four fundamental classes, which we may 
roughly call farmers, factory laborers, business men, and 
professional men, with other minor classes, every highly 
developed civilization must have. And the economic 
problem of our time is very largely how to adjust the in¬ 
terests of these necessary economic classes and to get them 
all to work together for the common welfare. The im¬ 
possibility of abolishing such fundamental economic classes 
must be evident, but this surely does not mean that there 
needs to be conflict between them. 

Another limitation which scientific investigation puts 
upon economic ideals in religion and ethics is the percep¬ 
tion that for the present, at least, the economic problem 
is not one merely of distribution, but is even more a 
problem of production. 1 If all the w r ealth of the United 
States, the richest nation in the world, were equally 
divided there still would not be enough for a good life 
with a proper standard of living for every family. 2 The 

1 See Professor H. B. Gardner’s address on “The Nature of Our 
Economic Problem,” before the American Economic Association in 
1919 (in the American Economic Review, March, 1920). 

a According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the 
average income per individual in the United States in 1913 was 


RELIGION AND ECONOMIC LIFE 223 


same would be true if the annual income were equally 
divided. And these statements which hold true of the 
United States are even more true of the other nations of 
the world. Evidently before a satisfactory standard of 
living can be made available for the masses of men, pro¬ 
duction will have to be enormously increased. This hard 
scientific fact has an immense bearing upon economic 
problems and ideals. We see at once that the economic 
problem of the world is not merely one of sharing goods 
but of sharing responsibilities and burdens. This does 
not mean however that there should be any injustice in 
the distribution of either goods or burdens. Indeed it is 
obvious that one of the surest ways to increase produc¬ 
tion is for every one to have the conviction that his own 
individual efforts are certain to meet with just reward. 
Production is to be encouraged, but one way to encourage 
production is to equalize opportunities and to secure jus¬ 
tice in distribution. 

A fourth limitation which scientific knowledge places 
upon religious and ethical ideals is the fact that it is im¬ 
possible for very large and complex groups to look after 
and safeguard completely the welfare and rights of their 
individual members through any collective measures. 
Hence the necessity of leaving to individuals a measure 
of liberty and of power to look after and safeguard their 
own welfare and rights. This is exactly what indeed the 
concept of private individual right connotes scientifically. 
It is a privilege or a power which society has seen fit to 
leave with the individual because social welfare on the 

$354.00, or $1770.00 per family of five; and in 1918, if reckoned 
in “1913 dollars,” it was still only $372.00 per individual, or $1860.00 
per family of five. It is hardly necessary to argue that such an 
income per family would provide no high standard of living. See the 
works of King and Friday already cited. 


224 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


whole is promoted by the leaving of such right or power 
with the individual. Every social right, in other words, 
springs from a social function and presupposes a social 
obligation. 1 But society functions through individuals. 
Hence every society finds it necessary to give some degree 
of security and liberty to the individual and to stimulate 
individual initiative and independence. The higher so¬ 
cieties are especially characterized by this security and 
liberty of their individual members and by individual 
initiative and independence. This is, of course, one of 
the meanings of the institution of private property, and 
why it is necessary for a high civilization. It is evident 
that any scientific social program must aim at the further¬ 
ance, within all reasonable limits, of the security and lib¬ 
erty of the individual and at the promotion of individual 
initiative and independence of personality. 

This clearly means that a scientific social 'program must 
aim at the extension of the benefits of private property to 
all, rather than the limitation of those benefits to a few. 
If private property aids in the reasonable security and 
liberty of the individual, then its benefits should obvi¬ 
ously be extended to all. Now, it is precisely one of the 
just condemnations of our present economic system that 
it leaves so many without the protection and opportunities 
which a reasonable amount of private property would 
bring, while others have such large amounts that they are 
tempted, as we have seen, to prodigality, self-indulgence, 

'Says Tawney (op. cit. p. 51): “The individual has no absolute 
rights; they are relative to the function which he performs in the 
community of which he is a member because, unless they are so 
limited, the consequences must be something in the nature of 
private war. All rights, in short, are conditional and derivative. 
They are derived from the end or purpose of the society in which 
they exist. They are conditional on being used to contribute to the 
attainment of that end.” 


KELIGION AND ECONOMIC LIFE 225 


and even the grossest materialism. 1 Obviously society 
should aim at the guaranteeing to each of its members, 
if possible, of the minimum amount of private property 
necessary to insure reasonable security and the develop¬ 
ment of personality. This it can do, we shall see, by a 
rational system of equalizing opportunities. Evidently, 
while the primary necessity of economic life is produc¬ 
tion, yet if the production of men be kept in mind as 
the great function of human society, then the just dis¬ 
tribution of wealth and income in such a way as to pro¬ 
mote the highest degree of common welfare is a problem 
scarcely less important than production itself. It is, of 
course, this problem of the just distribution of wealth and 
property with which our civilization is only now begin¬ 
ning seriously to grapple. 

Now, these limitations which scientific knowledge 
places upon ethical and religious ideals in their relation 
to our economic life do not, of course, mean that a Chris¬ 
tian social order or a co-operative commonwealth is impos¬ 
sible. To claim that a Christian social order is impos¬ 
sible because communism is impossible is absurd; and 
it is equally absurd to make the same claim because of 
the impossibility of the abolition of classes, or because of 
the primary necessity in the economic life of paying 
attention to production, or because of the impossibility 
of large groups safeguarding completely the rights and 
welfare of their individual members without private 
property and individual liberty. None of these limita¬ 
tions seriously affects the possibility of realizing a co¬ 
operative economic order in human society, because 

1 Compare Hobhouse’s admirable presentation of the same general 
ideas in the chapter on “Economic Liberalism” in his Liberalism 
(Chapter VIII). 


226 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

co-operation is more dependent upon inner attitudes and 
ideals than upon external forms and machinery. 

Nor do these limitations mean that the socialization of 
property is impossible, unless “socialization” is held to be 
synonymous with communism. But no sane social thinker 
holds to any such narrow conception of socialization. 
Socialization is the process by which individuals and 
things are made to serve the common welfare. Every 
individual and every institution, from the family to the 
state, should be socialized. This is indeed, in one sense, 
the whole purpose and end of the social process, and hence 
of social evolution. Property must become socialized, not 
less than the individual. All of the abuses of property 
spring from the fact that, like all existing institutions, it 
is still incompletely socialized, indeed, as we have noted, 
perhaps the most incompletely of all. But the socializa¬ 
tion of property is not a matter which can be settled by 
vesting the legal title to it in a collectivity rather than in 
individuals. Legal ownership is a relatively unimpor¬ 
tant matter as compared to the spirit which motivates the 
possessor of property in its use. Property, in a word, 
is to be socialized by socializing its use, by devoting it to 
the service of the common welfare. This is compatible 
with either private or public ownership. 

Here we may note the absurdity of the idea, which is 
often put forth at the present time, that we are shut up 
to the alternatives either of endorsing the present eco¬ 
nomic system or of accepting some form of communistic 
socialism. Nothing so hinders the rational and ethical 
solution of our economic problems as the presentation of 
such a dilemma as the final word of social science. Noth¬ 
ing, too, could be more absurd than such a statement, be¬ 
cause neither system has any adequate scientific support. 
The present economic system, as we have seen, represents 


RELIGION AND ECONOMIC LIFE 227 

a stage of economic life which in many respects more 
nearly corresponds to barbarism than to true civilization, 
while communistic socialism is an impossible system in 
any society with a complex industrial organization. Both 
modern capitalism, as it exists, and communistic socialism 
are highly unscientific. It would be nearer to the truth 
to say that social science indicates a hundred possibilities 
between these two extremes rather than to say that it 
endorses either. 

What, then, are the changes which are needed to bring 
our economic system more nearly into line with the prin¬ 
ciples of social science? First of all, the principle upon 
which our economic life is based must he changed from 
one of rights and privileges to one of functions and obli¬ 
gations. Social functions and social obligations must be¬ 
come the supreme guiding principles in economic life as 
in other phases of social life. Social rights, as we have 
said, must be regarded not as primary, hut as secondary 
to social functions and springing from the latter. “Men 
must regard themselves,” says Professor Tawney, “not as 
the owners of rights, hut as trustees for the discharge of 
functions and the instruments of social purpose.” 1 

In other words, the service of humanity must he made 
the end of the economic life. Society cannot he healthy 
in its business and industry until this principle is recog¬ 
nized. Upon it directly rests the great principle of re¬ 
ward which should control all business and industry, 
namely that remuneration should he based upon service 
rendered , —service not merely to one or a few but to so¬ 
ciety at large. This principle in its individual applica¬ 
tion is already generally recognized in our economic life. 
But individual selfishness has construed it to mean service 

1 The Acquisitive Society, p. 51. 



298 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


to one or a few. In other words, a regime of individual¬ 
ism has permitted an individualistic definition of “service 
rendered” and hence its social perversion. Social utility 
and individual utility are not always convertible terms, 
economic analysis has shown; but it is social utility which 
determines social values; and hence individuals in their 
economic life must be willing, if they possess the social 
spirit, to let society determine what is a “service ren¬ 
dered” and what its just remuneration. This is undoubt¬ 
edly the trend in our economic life at the present time, 
and we only need to hasten the process. Instead of per¬ 
mitting economic remuneration for catering to men’s 
vices, for sharp practices or mere cunning shrewdness, for 
violence or fraud, it is evident that society should permit 
remuneration only for creative 1 labor and for saving; 
and that individuals with a socialized conscience should 
seek wealth only through creative labor and through sav¬ 
ing. 

Until we have a society, however, made up of indi¬ 
viduals seeking to gain wealth only through creative 
labor or through saving, rather than seeking to attain 
it through chance or privilege or the opportunity to 
drive a bargain, we shall fail to secure an economic life 
which is just or in harmony with scientific principles. 
Society, to be sure, should do everything possible to make 
it difficult for men to secure economic rewards through 
chance or privilege or opportunities to drive hard bar¬ 
gains, but even more it should do everything possible to 
encourage creative, or productive, labor and to reward it. 
If it follows out far enough the principle of rewarding 
creative labor, it will automatically discourage attempts 
to secure money through sharp practices. The entire 

1 “Creative” is here used in the sense of “productive.” Routine 
labor in this sense is creative, since it is productive of social values. 


RELIGION AND ECONOMIC LIFE 229 


order of society should be such as to encourage creative 
labor by all who are able to work. Especially should 
social religion find in creative labor the primary and 
most elemental form of human service and honor it as 
such. Its social dignity, whether it be of a material or 
of a spiritual nature, must be constantly affirmed, and 
idleness in every social class condemned. 

Saving, too, is a service rendered to society, of a con¬ 
servative rather than a creative sort, and, in spite of all 
ideas to the contrary, equally entitled to economic reward, 
though the reward to creative labor in a society which 
hopes to be progressive must be kept proportionately 
larger. All human progress, however, rests upon the 
accumulation of economic goods as well as upon the ac¬ 
cumulation of knowledge and good will. All waste in 
human society is a waste of life, while all saving and 
conserving makes possible the further upbuilding of life. 
The ethical legitimacy of interest, considered as a social 
reward for personal saving, can be questioned only by 
those who fail to appreciate the positive function of sav¬ 
ing as a form of social service in economic life. This 
does not justify, of course, the living off of interest re¬ 
ceived from the savings of others, 1 which we so frequently 
find in modern society. That is a more complex question 
which we will touch upon later, when we consider the 
use of “findings” in society. It is sufficient at present 
to point out that in a right-minded society, individuals 
will seek their economic income chiefly in two ways: first, 
through creative, or productive, labor; and secondly, 

1 Nor what Professor Small calls the “absentee types of income” so 
frequently associated with modern capitalism (i. e., the receipt of 
income from capital with no business responsibility or service on 
the part of the owner of the capital). 


230 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


through interest received from personal savings invested 
in private business or in public enterprise. 

Equally important with these principles of distribution, 
is the spirit of co-operation in service in our economic 
life. If all business and industry are for the sake of 
the service of the common welfare, then employer and 
employee are co-partners in that service. Labor should 
not be regarded as a “commodity” any more than the 
directing ability of the employer should be so regarded. 
It would be truer to the facts to regard both as co-partners 
or collaborators in the common task of production. Both 
co-operate in a common service, and the service is not ren¬ 
dered simply or even chiefly to each other, but rather to 
society at large. If the spirit of co-operation for the 
service of the common weal could dominate our business 
and industry, conflicts of employer and employee would 
be minimized and, with the more scientific organization of 
industry upon a basis of social justice to all parties, 
might, in time, entirely disappear. 1 


So much for the general ethical principles which 

1 Among the many employers throughout the world who are putting 
such principles to practical and successful test, no one is perhaps 
more conspicuously successful than Mr. B. Seebohm Rowntree, British 
Quaker manufacturer and well-known student of industrial conditions. 
Mr. Rowntree lays down three fundamental principles which should 
control in the relation of employer and employee: 

(1) “Industry must create and develop fellowship. Any practices 
calculated to destroy such fellowship are immoral.” 

(2) “Every individual is of intrinsic worth, and human labor 
cannot be considered a commodity.” 

(3) “Industry must consider among its first charges the provision 
of an income sufficient to maintain in reasonable comfort all who 
engage in it; provision for special burdens to which those who engage 
in it may be subjected; provision for superannuation; provision for 
health conditions, development of personality, talents, and self- 
expression.” 

See his book, The Human Factor in Business. 


RELIGION AND ECONOMIC LIFE 231 


should guide in our economic life. Many would hold 
that social religion cannot go further than to lay down 
such general principles. But surely, social knowledge 
is far enough advanced to indicate also some concrete 
practical steps toward the realization of these prin¬ 
ciples. In the first place, it is evident that if we wish 
the co-operative spirit to dominate in our economic 
life, we should do all we can to encourage private 
co-operative enterprise. The end of free society is surely 
in learning the principles of social co-operation, and vol¬ 
untary co-operation must be the first step. By such co¬ 
operation in private business and industry a people may 
learn how to undertake and carry through public enter¬ 
prises in a co-operative way. Voluntary co-operation in 
private enterprises is, to some extent, probably necessary 
education for the successful conduct of co-operative public 
enterprises. Public ownership should be looked forward 
to as the normal development of the co-operative spirit 
in all communities, at least in lines of business and in¬ 
dustry which are suited for public ownership. 

Just at present, economists seem rather agreed that 
public ownership is apt to be successful only in those 
industries which have been reduced more or less to rou¬ 
tine, which require little initiative, or which for public 
reasons may be more conveniently conducted by public 
than by private agencies. But the range of industries 
which may be successfully carried on through public 
co-operative enterprise may obviously increase with the 
increasing intelligence and good will of the whole society. 
Moreover, through the progress of science, many busi¬ 
nesses and industries may in time be reduced to routine, 
which now apparently require great individual initiative 
and the pioneering of exceptional ability. It would be a 
rash man, therefore, who would place limits upon public 


232 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


ownership and public co-operative enterprise. Our gen¬ 
eral social principle of maximizing co-operation in society 
would seem obviously to imply the maximization of co¬ 
operative public enterprise also. The safe principle in 
our present stage of social and economic development 
would seem to be to retain both private and public own¬ 
ership according to the needs and convenience of society 
at large, hedging private ownership about, however, with 
such safeguards and regulations as will gradually educate 
and train the whole mass of the people to carry on their 
economic life co-operatively through public organizations. 

Such education for the successful undertaking of co¬ 
operative public enterprises will automatically result if 
a larger measure of democracy is introduced into the 
present organization of industry. Democracy in industry 
is a step toward public co-operative enterprise, and is 
indeed the only basis upon which public ownership and 
management would be tolerable. Now democracy in in¬ 
dustry, as in the social life generally, means fraternity, 
good will, and the equality and freedom which are neces¬ 
sary to realize fraternity. It is in line with that prin¬ 
ciple of co-partnership which we spoke of above. But 
concretely, it means that employees have some voice in 
the conduct of the business and some control over the 
conditions under which they work. It means that a given 
industrial group is not ruled autocratically, but by the 
opinion and will of the whole group. Various concrete 
methods have been devised to bring this about, such as 
shop committees, industrial councils and the like; but the 
obviously important thing is the spirit of democracy and 
fraternity in both employer and employees. 

By concrete measures which will encourage private co- 


RELIGION AND ECONOMIC LIFE 233 

operative enterprise, public ownership and management 
where practicable, and the more democratic organization 
of business and industry, modern society can enter upon 
a deliberate policy of maximizing co-operation in its eco¬ 
nomic life. If it is going to minimize hostility and con¬ 
flict, however, it must enter also upon a general policy of 
equalizing opportunity for all. For the equalizing of 
opportunity is of the very essence of a democratic, Chris¬ 
tian organization of the economic life. It should be pos¬ 
sible for every child born in a rightly organized society 
to have equal opportunity with every other child of de¬ 
veloping the best that is in him and of demonstrating his 
real social worth. Such equality of opportunity is obvi¬ 
ously difficult to achieve in practice, but it must be un- 
weariedly striven for by a society which aims at social 
justice, and it is the mark which distinguishes a liberal, 
democratic organization of society from the various 
Utopias based upon some kind of benevolent autocracy. 
Yet to keep equality of opportunity in the economic life 
has been found to be next to impossible under our present 
laws for the acquisition and inheritance of property. 
Those laws must certainly be modified if we wish to 
achieve equality of opportunity and to preserve it. 

But before we speak of necessary modifications in pres¬ 
ent laws and institutions, let us guard ourselves against 
the error of thinking that equality of opportunity means 
the establishment of dead-level equality in society. On 
the contrary, equality of opportunity implies the possi¬ 
bility of inequalities developing between individuals, and 
especially in regard to economic reward. What equality 
of opportunity does is to give every one a fair chance and 
allow individual ability and merit to manifest themselves 
without any hampering artificial conditions. Equality of 


234 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

opportunity will throw the individual more on his own 
resources and not permit special privilege to make success 
for some and to deny it to others. It is therefore a fur¬ 
ther step in the rational development of individual respon¬ 
sibility and of personality. But from equality of oppor¬ 
tunity we must expect that inequalities will develop; for 
different individuals with different abilities will make 
different use of their opportunities and achieve results 
of very unequal social value. But these inequalities will 
he the result, not of artificial social conditions, but of the 
different uses which individuals voluntarily make of their 
equal opportunities. The passion for equality, then, 
should not be confused with the passion for justice in 
social and economic life. If we are just we shall wish 
different degrees of social merit to be differently rewarded. 
We shall wish, not equality of reward, but equality of 
opportunity. 

What concrete measures in addition to the development 
of co-operation and democracy in industry will work 
toward the equalizing of opportunities in our social and 
economic life ? Obviously, the measures which have been 
devised by scientific social workers to minimize the in¬ 
equalities which result from ignorance, sickness, unem¬ 
ployment, low wages, hereditary physical defects, accident, 
old age, and death. All of these matters are more or less 
subject to social control. For example, so many inequali¬ 
ties of opportunity spring from our educational system 
that if we want equality of opportunity, obviously we 
must devise an educational system which will give every 
child an equal chance in education, regardless of the eco¬ 
nomic status of its parents or guardians. Concretely, it 
should be as easily possible for the poor child of ability 
to get even the highest university training as for the child 


RELIGION AND ECONOMIC LIFE 235 


born in the most fortunate economic surroundings. Edu¬ 
cation should be made available in proportion to abilities 
shown by students rather than in proportion to the wealth 
of parents or guardians. 

Again, if we wish equality of opportunity, conditions 
of public health must be equalized. The health of the 
poorest child should be protected not less than the health 
of the child born in the richest family, and the conditions 
and hours of labor of the poorest class of workers should 
be kept strictly in harmony with the laws of their physical 
well-being. The wage worker must also be protected 
against unemployment and its dangers. The surplus 
profits of periods of prosperity should be made available, 
through systems of saving and insurance, to tide the 
worker over periods of industrial depression. The same 
thing should be done to meet the crises in wage-earning 
families occasioned by sickness, accident, old-age, and 
death. In general, industry should furnish the worker 
adequate protection in every precarious situation; it 
should be made safe for the worker and develop rather 
than lessen his manhood. Therefore, wages below the 
standard necessary for a decent living for the worker and 
his immediate family should not be tolerated. Indeed, 
every community should maintain a minimum standard 
of welfare for all its citizens beneath which it should suf¬ 
fer none to fall as long as its total resources are adequate 
to meet the need } All of these measures are within the 

1 This is the "first pillar” in the justly celebrated “Report on 
Reconstruction” of the British Labor Party. (See The New Republic, 
February 16, 1918, or Ward, The New Social Order, Chapter VII.) 
The other three “pillars” of the new social order were: 

(2) The Democratic Control of Industry. 

(3) A Revolution in National Finance, that is, the system of 
taxation. 

(4) Use of the Surplus Wealth of the Nation for the Common 
Good. 


236 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


limits of the economically possible and should receive the 
support of humanitarian religion. 

If the principles and measures which have just been 
set forth could become incorporated in our economic life 
and system of industry, while perfect equality of oppor¬ 
tunity might not be realized, it would be approached. 
Certainly the glaring inequalities of our present social 
order—“vast wealth for the few and insufficiency for the 
many; luxuries for the rich with miserable hovels and 
insufficient food often for the poor; idleness for the few 
and excessive hours of toil for the many;—frequent 
subordination of the well-being of the many to the finan¬ 
cial profits of a few”—all these things would disappear. 
Industrial poverty—poverty resulting from economic con¬ 
ditions rather than from weakness in individual character 
—would be gradually abolished and prosperity diffused 
among all classes. It is no exaggeration to say, as Pro¬ 
fessor Carver says, that “we need not have poverty in 
our midst a generation longer than we want it,” 1 pro¬ 
vided, of course, we are willing to bear the cost of the 
scientific measures necessary for its abolition. 

Even the staggering costs of the great war have prob¬ 
ably not made it impossible to extend economic justice 
and prosperity thus to all classes if we will take thought 
and develop the right social attitudes. Unless humanity’s 
resources are crippled by further wars and class conflicts, 
probably the most advanced nations of Europe and 
America could abolish poverty within a generation or so. 
For ours is still a dynamic, expanding economic life which 
is not yet near the limits of its resources. There is still 
an economic surplus accruing to many through the dis¬ 
covery and development of new material resources and 

* Principles of Political Economy, p. 583. 


EELIGION AND ECONOMIC LIFE 237 

of latent capacities in men, as well as through the increase 
of our numbers and the multiplication of world contacts. 
Hence to many in such a society come economic gains 
which are not the result of their creative labor or of their 
saving, but which have been made for them by the cir¬ 
cumstances of social and economic development. Thus 
enormous fortunes accrue to a few individuals, who are 
happily circumstanced and have business shrewdness, 
from what economists call natural monopolies, from the 
rise of land values through the increase of population, 
and from unexpected social emergencies. These “find¬ 
ings,” as we may call them, which come from a combina¬ 
tion of circumstances and business shrewdness, are greatly 
increased through our laws of inheritance which permit 
the passing along of this property almost intact from gen¬ 
eration to generation. Such inheritance of property from 
a previous generation is, of course, a “finding” for the 
generation that receives it. Evidently no ethical social 
question could be of more practical import at the present 
time than the question what attitude individuals and 
society should take toward such “findings”—that is, 
toward wealth which has come to individuals as a result 
neither of creative labor nor of personal savings. 

On the side of the individual, it would seem that if 
the principle be accepted at all that property should be 
held as a trust from society, then the individual should 
feel that this principle holds doubly in the case of wealth 
which comes into his hands as the result neither of his 
personal labor nor of his personal saving. He should rec¬ 
ognize that such income is a result of no effort of his own 
and belongs in a peculiar sense to society, from which he 
receives it in trust for the common welfare. On the side 
of society, it would seem that, while it may be generally 
convenient to leave a large part of these “findings” in 


238 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


the hands of private individuals, yet obviously when 
social emergencies exist, this unearned wealth should be 
the first to be drawn upon through taxation to meet social 
necessities. “Taxes,” says Professor Shenton, “are a con¬ 
tribution which an individual or a corporation makes for 
tho public good.” 1 Now, while taxes should be levied 
to some extent upon personal earnings and savings, be¬ 
cause all should contribute to the public good, yet obvi¬ 
ously they should be levied according to the ability of 
individuals to contribute, and hence should be levied much 
more heavily upon “findings” than upon “earnings,” as 
the recipients of the former are usually much more able 
to make contributions to the public good. This, as a mat¬ 
ter of fact, is the policy at the present time of all the 
more advanced nations of the world. 

Hence, if it be asked where society will get the funds 
necessary to carry out the program for general social 
amelioration and the equalizing of opportunity which we 
have sketched, the answer is that such funds should be 
drawn in the main from the economic “findings” which 
happen to drop into the hands of individuals, or in plain 
terms, from taxes upon inheritances, upon all monopolies 
of natural resources including monopoly land values, and 
upon excessive incomes whether derived from interest or 
speculative profits. 2 The proper adjustment of such taxes 
so as to promote general social well-being is a matter for 
experts to decide, but that they can be so adjusted all 
experts in taxation agree. The chief point for us to note 
is that in these three great sources of public revenue, 
through taxation upon “findings,” there are ample funds 
to carry out within one generation or two any reasonable 

1 Christian Aspects of Economic Reconstruction, p. 23. 

* For elaboration of the importance of taxation as a means of 
social reconstruction, see The Social Problem , Chapter IV. 


RELIGION AND ECONOMIC LIFE 239 


program for the betterment of the social and economic 
condition of the masses, provided of course that such 
funds are not squandered by corrupt governments, by un¬ 
scientific attempts at social amelioration, or by foolish 
conflicts between classes, nations, or races. Such a pro¬ 
gram is easily within the limits of the socially practicable 
and has, as a matter of fact, been entered upon by the. 
most advanced communities in the modern world. Thus 
through scientific taxation, wealth and opportunity might 
become far more justly distributed in our society, and as 
we have already said, if supplemented by other scientific 
measures, poverty might be wiped out within one genera¬ 
tion or two. 

However, before any such utilization of the economic 
surplus of society for the common welfare could become 
general the whole attitude of the possessing classes toward 
wealth and toward their fellow human beings must be 
changed. There lies the fundamental difficulty. As long 
as economic possessions are valued more highly than 
human lives, so long it will be impossible to put on a 
program of social and economic justice in society at large. 
What is needed, and what social religion should under¬ 
take to get recognized, is a socialized ethics of the expendi¬ 
ture and use of wealth. We have already spoken of the 
ethics of acquiring wealth. Equally important is the 
ethics of spending wealth. 

The first legitimate use of wealth is, of course, that of 
self-maintenance and the maintenance of one’s immedi¬ 
ate family, because self-support is after all the first eco¬ 
nomic service which any one is called upon to render to 
society. The second legitimate use of wealth should be 
to contribute to the common welfare, especially through 
submitting to taxation to meet public needs. The third 


240 THE RECONSTRUCTION OE RELIGION 


legitimate use of wealth should be to use it for the de¬ 
velopment of private business, that is, of private produc¬ 
tive enterprises which will increase the prosperity of the 
whole community. The fourth legitimate use of wealth 
is for private gifts and benevolences to help others, and 
especially to promote worthy causes which work for the 
public good, such as private philanthropy, private educa¬ 
tional enterprises, and above all, religious and moral 
movements. If there is any legitimate place in the use 
of wealth for private luxury and self-indulgence in a 
socialized scheme of ethics, it must come fifth and last. 
But it is exactly to this last use that a very considerable 
portion of the surplus wealth of most modern nations, and 
especially of the United States, is devoted according to 
the most careful calculations. 1 

If it were not for the waste of wealth in luxury and in 
self-indulgence, a sin of practically all social classes, we 
should have ample funds not only for religion and edu¬ 
cation, art and science, but for wiping out poverty and 
all the gross inequalities which exist in modern society 
within a comparatively short time. Hence the funda¬ 
mental need of our society, after all, is more socialized 
standards of economic consumption, or, in other words, 
of the expenditure of money. Yet few would disagree 
that some such order of expenditure as that just outlined, 
should be observed. Indeed, it is practically the order 
enforced by law when social emergencies occur. Self¬ 
maintenance comes first, but luxury and self-indulgence 

1 According to government returns given out by the Federal Bureau 
of Education, the people of the United States spent for luxuries in 
1920, $22,700,000,000, or more than one-third their total income. For 
tobacco alone, nearly as much was spent as for education and religion 
combined, and its total cost in one year was more than all that has 
been paid out by the people of the United States for higher education 
in 273 years. See School Life for April 1, 1921. 


RELIGION AND ECONOMIC LIFE 241 

come last in every code for the expenditure of wealth 
which society can afford to recognize. Hence again, it is 
evident that social obligation in the use of wealth is the 
fundamental principle which must be recognized in any 
attempt to transform our economic system. 

We have sketched no impossible Utopia hut only the 
goal towards which the best economic thinking in our 
civilization is moving. Practically all such thinking 
agrees that we need an economic system which will put 
human values first, which will emphasize economic obli¬ 
gations rather than economic rights, which will maximize 
co-operation both along private and along public lines, 
which will equalize opportunity, and finally which will 
make private wealth a trust held for public good. Yet 
these conclusions of our best social and economic think¬ 
ing, after all, are not different in essence from the prin¬ 
ciples laid down by Jesus in his dealing with economic 
questions. He did not speak of rights, but of obligations. 
He had regard only to the human values. Lie emphasized 
that the first use of possessions, after self-maintenance, 
if not equally with it, was to help others and to promote 
all worthy causes. Finally, we may say that his whole 
thought of wealth centered on the idea that it was a trust 
for which the individual was to be held strictly account¬ 
able to God and administer for the benefit of his fellow- 
men. 1 These may be very simple and elementary prin¬ 
ciples, but our civilization has evidently not yet been able 
to realize them in its economic life; or rather it has not 
seriously tried to realize them. Yet modern science, we 
see, has come to practically the same conclusions. It 

1 The reader cannot do better than consult for the elaboration and 
application of Christian principles in industry, the report of the 
Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook on The Church and 
Industrial Reconstruction, published in 1920. 


242 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


might be well, then, if the modern world would emphasize 
the economic aspect of the religion which it professes. 
It is at least safe to say that no economic disaster will 
come to our world through following out the ethical eco¬ 
nomic principles taught by Jesus. Some of the possessing 
classes apparently fear these principles, because they see 
that the result of their application, even though it may 
mean the extending of justice and prosperity to all, will 
be the diminution of their own wealth and privileges. 
On the other hand, social disaster will inevitably come if 
we much longer attempt to conduct our business and in¬ 
dustry upon the pagan principles which have been so much 
in vogue in our economic life. Here again, then, the 
findings of social religion and of social science are prac¬ 
tically the same; hence there is no longer excuse if these 
two fail to work together for the redemption of our eco¬ 
nomic life. 


CHAPTER IX 


RELIGION AND POLITICAL LIFE 

A religion adapted to the needs of modern life must 
have a positive and unequivocal doctrine concerning those 
relations of men to one another within nations, and of 
nations to one another which we term “political.” Social 
religion must fearlessly oppose the pagan idea of the state 
and all forms of political immoralism, because if organized 
authority in society does not recognize itself as bound by 
moral principles, we can scarcely expect that individuals 
will do so. If the very principle of organization in society 
is itself immoral, such as the principles of force and 
expediency, it is idle to think that the conduct of indi¬ 
viduals will, as a rule, rise to any higher level. 

Social organization and social control are two of the 
most pervasive influences in the lives of men, and their 
chief expression is in political life and institutions. 
Group organization is the chief means by which the indi¬ 
vidual functions in social life, and group control is the 
chief social means of determining individual character. 
Now, above all lesser groups, next to humanity itself, 
stands the political state or nation. In our present world, 
indeed, it is the highest controlling group. If immoral 
principles are tolerated in the form of its organization 
and control, then a Christian social order is impossible. 
Religion has vast issues at stake in political questions, as 
indeed the Great War made evident. It should be one 
of its first tasks to secure among men such political or- 

243 


244 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


ganization as will make possible a normal life character¬ 
ized by good will and co-operation, peace and security. 

Yet notoriously the political, like the economic life, has 
remained divorced from religion and, even in the most 
Christian nations, relatively pagan down to the present 
time. Over a generation ago, the late Professor Lester 
F. Ward said, “In politics, we are still in the Stone Age,” 
and his statement seems almost as true to-day as when it 
was uttered. From Machiavellrs time to the present, as 
we have seen, 1 we have had our political life controlled 
largely by the pagan principle that the end of the state, 
and even of political action within the state, is power. By 
the single end of gaining or holding power, whole nations, 
as well as political parties within nations, have sought to 
justify their conduct. Fear and force are still the main 
reliances of the state in international relations, and often 
even in internal government. Thus the pagan state sur^ 
vives in our world, not merely as an idea, but as a fact. 
It is, indeed, perhaps the most challenging fact, next after 
our pagan industrial system, which confronts social re¬ 
ligion to-day. 

Even when Machiavellian principles are not openly 
avowed in politics, political conduct is frequently divorced 
entirely from religion. It is said that the political be¬ 
longs to the secular and should not be under the control 
of the religious. There results the politics of self- 
interest, which while it may not be as starkly pagan as 
Machiavellian politics, yet works to the same end. Indi¬ 
viduals in such a system act politically according to their 
self-interest, or according to individual expediency. Self- 
interest, however, usually coincides with some class in¬ 
terest, and so politics becomes a struggle of classes for 

1 See Chapter IV. 


BELIGION AND POLITICAL LIFE 245 

power. Under such circumstances, politics and govern¬ 
ment become an expression of contending selfish interests 
and men lose faith in government and law, because they 
seem to represent only the triumph of the selfishness of 
one class over the selfishness of another class. Thus re¬ 
spect for all law and government is undermined. 

Still more disastrous results are seen in the relations 
between nations. If moral principles are not binding in 
those relations, then, as so many German publicists said 
before the Great War, there can only be etiquette, but no 
morality, between nations. Consequently, it is impossible 
for a state to transgress the moral law in its relations with 
other states. War and conquest are thus justified and 
become inseparable from international relations. It seems 
incredible that such monstrous doctrines could be sanc¬ 
tioned by civilized peoples; yet we know that until very 
lately they were openly sanctioned. Even when not 
openly sanctioned, they were often secretly acted upon. 
However, the doctrine that the chief end of international 
politics is commercial success is morally no higher, and 
it has had very similar results. For this end the exploita¬ 
tion of smaller and weaker nations has been brought about 
by various forms of intimidation or intrigue which have 
been called “diplomacy.” Such standards have been so 
prevalent in the past that our whole political life, national 
and international, has been essentially pagan and well 
calculated to increase suspicion, hostility, and conflict 
among classes and nations. This, as we have already seen, 
was the profound cause of that great convulsion which 
shook our world from 1914 to 1918, and which has left 
European civilization shattered and uncertain. 

Evidently we have been trying to live under an un¬ 
sound political system, a system which is far from mini- 


246 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


mizing hostility and conflict among classes and nations. 
Manifestly we need a system which will maximize co¬ 
operation among the nations as well as between classes 
within the nations. We need a political life built upon 
a different principle than power as the end, and which 
shall use different methods than fear and force. Good 
will should replace fear, and understanding should take 
the place of force. But this cannot be as long as group 
selfishness dominates political life. If we are to maximize 
co-operation between nations and classes, the whole spirit 
of our political life must be changed. Instead of a poli¬ 
tics of power or of self-interest, we must have a politics 
of service. In other words, we need a politics which will 
recognize the service of humanity as its end. This end 
must be sought, of course, through the highest and best 
development of each individual nation, and even of all 
the classes within each nation. Such politics is not in¬ 
consistent with the highest patriotism, because loyalty to 
humanity does not weaken loyalty to country, when the 
end of national existence itself becomes the service of 
humanity. Patriotism and humanitarian religion may in 
time thus blend and become practically indistinguishable, 
though at present they may so often seem to be in con¬ 
tradiction to one another. A true nationalism and a true 
internationalism are not opposed. 

What sort of political organization will further best the 
co-operation of nations and classes and work for the 
highest and best development of all individuals, classes, 
and nations ? Such an organization manifestly would 
have to appeal to the hopes and stimulate the aspirations 
of all men. It would have to recognize the full rights of 
the common man as a member of society. It could rec¬ 
ognize no artificial distinctions of caste or class, of race 


RELIGION AND POLITICAL LIFE 247 


or blood, but would have to recognize the potentially equal 
social worth of each man, and assign to each his position 
in accordance with his personal merits. It would have 
to aim at substantial equality of rights and opportunities 
for all classes of men. Such a political system would aim 
at the welfare of all and not of any special class or group. 
Its ultimate aim, indeed, could be nothing less than an 
adequate life for all. 

Yet such a political system, if it is practicable, could 
not be imposed upon society from above or without. It 
would have to grow up from within, from the will of every 
member of the political group. Superimposed benevo¬ 
lence cannot reconcile men to one another nor develop the 
highest and best within them. That is possible only 
through mutual understanding, the free exchange of ideas 
and ideals, and the free formation of a common or group 
will. Hence a political system which aims at the welfare 
of all must give the will of every adult, intelligent person 
a share in the making of the common will of the group. 
This means that the group becomes self-governing, self- 
determining, and not only the group, but every individual. 
Men must be free, as well as equal in right, in such a 
political organization. And this sort of political organi¬ 
zation is called a “democracy.” 

Such a social and political system is the only remedy 
for those class divisions, distrusts, and misunderstand¬ 
ings which threaten to tear our civilization asunder. It 
alone can reconcile men to one another, because it recog¬ 
nizes the worth of each man, counts each as one, and en¬ 
lists the interest and will of each for the good of the 
whole. It alone, through the free exchange of ideas, the 
interpenetration of mind and mind, the free formation 
of a common opinion and will, brings understanding and 
sympathy between classes and puts their co-operation upon 


248 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


a voluntary basis. 1 It alone is capable, therefore, of 
warding off class strife and preventing revolutions of 
violence. Finally, it alone can reconcile the nations, be¬ 
cause it postulates equality of right between nations and 
seeks co-operation through understanding and good will. 

Such democracy is not an idle dream, though it be a 
dream which the peoples of Western civilization have 
been dreaming already for a century. With its emphasis 
upon fraternity, and upon the equality and liberty which 
are necessary for fraternity, democracy is evidently the 
same movement in the social and political realm as Chris¬ 
tianity in the ethical and religious realm. 2 The religion 
of Jesus, as we have seen, is essentially an attempt to take 
the sentiments, affections, and values which are naturally 
characteristic of the family and universalize them, mak¬ 
ing them the standard of social practice for all men in all 
their relations with one another; while democracy is an 
attempt to carry over from the family and the neighbor¬ 
hood the “patterns” of fraternity, equality, and liberty, 
furnished by these primary groups, to the wider social 
and political life. Hence, the democratic movement has 
the same social and psychological roots as social religion. 
The two movements have many things in common. Their 
ideals are essentially similar and derived from the same 
source. 3 


1 Among the many writers who have set forth these ideas, Hobliouse 
(TAberalism) ; Mecklin (An Introduction to Social Ethics) ; and Miss 
Follett ( The New State ) especially deserve mention. Professor 
Mechlin’s book, in particular, discusses democracy as “the solution 
of the social problem,” showing how essential democracy harmonizes 
social relations in the family, the church, the school, and the factory, 
as well as in the state. Miss Follett’s book is an acute socio- 
psychological analysis of the democratic social process, showing how 
it involves the interpenetration of minds and the creation of a group 
mind. 

• See Cooley, Social Organization, Chapter V. 

• Compare Chapter III. 


RELIGION AND POLITICAL LIFE 249 

Now, as we noted in the very first chapter of this book, 
one of the reasons for the failure of existing religion is 
its failure to become adjusted to democracy. We should 
expect a close alliance between religion and democracy in 
modern society. To a considerable extent this is what we 
find. Nevertheless, the cases of maladjustment between 
them are almost as striking as those between religion and 
modern science. 1 Conventional religion, of course, ap¬ 
proves of democratic forms of government so far as they 
have been developed in countries where they are already 
established. Yet the conventional Christianity of church 
members too often seems to fear the program of democ¬ 
racy when it comes to the relations of classes, nations, and 
races. Existing religion, too frequently, has no vision of 
democracy in these relations. It tolerates great gulfs be¬ 
tween economic classes, between nations, and between 
races. It may be very strenuous, as it is in some denomi¬ 
nations, regarding a democratic organization within the 
church; hut it may be very indifferent toward the rights 
of the common man and toward the great question of sub¬ 
stantial equality of rights and opportunities in society 
for all men. 

Yet it should be evident that the democratic movement 
in the modern world is as much the natural ally of social 
religion as is social science. Modern democracy is essen¬ 
tially a movement to realize the ideals of social religion; 
and all genuine social religion is necessarily a religion 
of democracy. If religion is sufficiently developed on the 
social side, it will furnish the dynamic which will make 
possible the realization of democracy. It will foster the 
sympathy, understanding, and good will between indi- 

1 A brief statement of these maladjustments was made by the writer 
in a paper read before the American Sociological Society in 1919 on 
Religion and Democracy (Vol. XIV of the Proceedings). 


250 THE EECONSTEUCTION OF EELIGIOH 


viduals, classes, nations, and races, which are necessary 
for the working of democracy. It will not fear to put on 
a program of justice and fraternity between races, nations, 
classes, and in social life generally. 

On the other hand, the democratic movement should 
find its natural ally in social religion; for democracy pre¬ 
supposes social religion and is unrealizable without it. 
Inasmuch as the democratic spirit is unwilling to recog¬ 
nize the artificial distinctions of class, race, or other ex¬ 
ternal conditions, it is plain that it pre-supposes, as an 
ethical axiom, that all men are brothers and are equal in 
rights. Thus democracy, in the modern sense of the 
word, is an achievement of humanitarian civilization and 
its fate is bound up with the progress of humanitarian 
religion and ethics. Or rather, must we not go still fur¬ 
ther and say that democracy is an aspiration, a social and 
political ideal, which is unrealizable except as we develop 
a Christian world? True democracy was horn from 
social religion, especially from the religion of Jesus, and 
its fate is bound up with that of social religion. “The 
democratic movement,” says Professor Cooley, 1 “in so far 
as it feels a common spirit in all men, is of the same 
nature as Christianity.” For its harmonious working, 
even when imperfectly developed, democracy requires 
more good will, more social intelligence and character in 
the individual, than any other form of government or 
society. It requires, therefore, that social values be 
brought to the individual in the intensest way. That is, 
it requires the help of social religion. An irreligious, 
atheistic, materialistic democracy might be possible for a 
time, but in our complex society, it could have no chance 
of success in the long run. 


1 Social Organization, p. 203. 


RELIGION AND POLITICAL LIFE 251 


If the substantial identity of the ideals of democracy 
and humanitarian ethics be conceded, then it is evident 
that democracy will be realized in proportion as the ideals 
of social religion are realized. Both are not only prac¬ 
ticable, but indispensable for our civilization. The con¬ 
trol of social life by custom or by coercive authority is no 
longer practicable in a dynamic civilization like ours. 
Though custom-ruled and authoritarian societies, some¬ 
times mistakenly called “democracies,” have characterized 
the history of the world from the earliest times down to 
the present, yet this does not show that they are adapted 
to present needs. Our world is entering upon a new stage 
of social evolution as we have tried to show, a stage of 
awakened social consciousness, of higher social and ethical 
ideals, of true civilization; and the aspiration for democ¬ 
racy, for a new and freer form of social control, is coin¬ 
cident with this new stage of social evolution. The peo¬ 
ples of the world are dissatisfied with the old authoritarian 
forms of social life, and are groping toward a new and 
higher form of society. 

Authoritarian control sprang originally from the con¬ 
quest of one group by another, and so is unsuited to a 
world that is trying to rid itself of the ethics of barbarism. 
Hence, surviving autocracy in the forms of government, 
of industry, and of social life generally occasions much 
of the unrest of the present. Authoritarian control is an 
anachronism in the modern world. Human society must 
find a new basis for its own control. That new basis is 
in the rational like-mindedness, the intelligent purpose 
and will of its individual members. It must seek its 
unity not through coercive authority, but through the sym¬ 
pathetic understanding and intelligent purpose of the 
whole population. The untrammeled opinion and will of 
every adult member of society must be given a share in 


252 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


the determination of social policies and institutional 
forms. This is the new, experimental phase of social life 
upon which we have already entered. We cannot turn 
back. We must go on to perfect a democratic social and 
political life, or we must fail altogether. 

We should not wish to turn back; for democracy is 
bound up with the attainment of all our higher personal 
and social ideals. A self-conscious, self-determining civi¬ 
lization is necessarily democratic; for the essence of 
democracy sociologically, as a form of social control, is 
that it is an attempt to do for the group what organic 
evolution has already done for the individual: to let it be 
ruled freely by its own mind. Just as in the developed 
individual, the mind directs and controls, so in a demo¬ 
cratic group or society, the social or public mind—that 
synthesis of all the individual minds active in the group 
—directs and controls group behavior. We say that 
democracy is “the rule of public opinion.” And this is 
correct; but public opinion is nothing but the synthesis 
of individual judgments. Again, we say that democracy 
is “the rule of the popular will”; but the popular will is 
nothing but the co-ordination and co-operation of the 
active wills of the individual members of the group. A 
society is democratic just in the proportion that the 
opinion and will of every individual in the group is free 
to count in the determination of group policies and con¬ 
duct. Democracy, therefore, means the development of 
personality as well as of social life. 

However, just as we begin to perceive the outlines of 
that free and self-determining society at which modern 
civilization is aiming, and which we have agreed to call 
“democracy,” we begin also to see its difficulties and dan¬ 
gers. While autocratic forms of social organization and 


RELIGION AND POLITICAL LIFE 253 


control will no longer work in our world, yet the demo¬ 
cratic forms are so untried and so dependent upon the 
development of personality in individuals that their suc¬ 
cess is still a matter of uncertainty. If they are to suc¬ 
ceed, democratic societies must attain to a new level of 
development of intelligence and character in the mass of 
their individual members. Obviously, democratic control 
may he ignorant and brutal, if public opinion is unin¬ 
formed, irrational, or biased by selfish interests. Eor 
public opinion, let us remember, is simply the result of 
the co-ordination of individual opinions. If individuals 
remain ignorant and selfish, the group opinion and the 
group will cannot be otherwise, and social disaster must 
follow. There is no magic in numbers; neither can we 
safely trust “the goodness of human nature.” If democ¬ 
racy is not to result in disaster, it will be only because it 
becomes a conscious achievement built upon the adequate 
development of personality in the mass of individuals. 
Democracy is an adventure for our world because the in¬ 
telligence and character in individuals necessary for its 
success still remain to be developed. 

That the future of democracy, then, depends absolutely 
upon the social and political education of the masses of 
the people is obvious; for vast masses of men cannot form 
rational opinions and execute rational social decisions 
without highly developed social and political intelligence 
and character in each individual. Democratic societies 
thus need to educate every individual for his share in 
the work of social control, at least to the extent of enabling 
him to decide wisely and unselfishly between competing 
policies and leaders. To a greater and greater extent, no 
doubt, this social and political education may be imparted 
in the public schools. But there is danger here, since 
stereotyped and ready-made judgments on social and po- 


254 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


litical questions can never be adequate for intelligent 
social control in a dynamic civilization. The intelligence 
and education which democracy demands must be a pro¬ 
gressive affair. The whole people must be continually 
informing and educating one another regarding the social 
conditions and needs of every portion of the population. 
Consequently democracy depends upon freedom of inter¬ 
communication among individuals, upon free public dis¬ 
cussion, a free press, free assemblage, and the free selec¬ 
tion of public policies and leaders, not less than upon 
good social character in individuals. All of these means 
of public education of the masses in social and political 
matters must be kept alive in a democracy; for the inter¬ 
penetration of mind by mind is the very method of form¬ 
ing public opinion and popular will. Moreover, if public 
opinion is to become highly rational, freedom of thought 
as well as freedom of intercommunication must be en¬ 
couraged. The dependence of democracy upon these 
agencies,—schools and education, free speech and a free 
press,—has for these reasons become a commonplace. Yet 
all of these things, if they are to work without perver¬ 
sion, manifestly imply a highly socialized character in 
individuals. They imply participation in the higher 
social values by the mass of individuals. Social religion 
should be vitally interested in them; and can be of vital 
help to them. 

The greatest foe of democracy, next after social and 
political ignorance, is the unsocial spirit, whether it mani¬ 
fest itself as the selfishness of individuals or of groups. 
Indeed, democracy in the modern sense, depends upon 
social sympathy and good will quite as much as upon 
social intelligence. For this is what we mean largely by 
a socialized character in individuals. It is, at this point, 


RELIGION AND POLITICAL LIFE 255 


too, that the absolute dependence of modern democracy 
upon social religion emerges; for in the great civilized 
nations of the present, the good will which is merely the 
spontaneous expression of natural impulse, as it was in 
the primitive kinship group, will not suffice. The good 
will which modern democracy must draw upon must he 
an ideal creation. It must spring from that understand¬ 
ing and sympathy which comes from the deliberate cul¬ 
ture of altruistic and fraternal sentiments in hetero¬ 
geneous populations. This “fraternalism” in modem 
democracies must take the place which the sentiment of 
kinship held in primitive groups as the foundation of sym¬ 
pathetic like-niindedness and unity. Things which destroy 
sympathy, understanding and good will in populations 
are not less menacing to democracy than things which 
destroy free thought, free speech, and the untrammeled 
expression of public opinion. The growth of harriers, 
therefore, that obstruct sympathy and understanding 
among different elements of a nation will, in the long 
run, be just as fatal to its democracy as the growth of 
institutions limiting the free interchange of ideas and the 
free expression of popular will. Hence democracies need 
the help of social religion, especially, for the cultivation 
of a fraternal spirit among their members. 

Individual selfishness becomes particularly menacing 
to democracy when it assumes the form of exaggerated 
individualism. In America, in particular, the conception 
of democracy has been too frequently that everybody 
should be allowed to do as he pleases, provided that he 
does not interfere with the rights of other individuals. 
Such an individualistic, laissez-faire democracy rapidly 
destroys the sense of social obligation, leads to the over¬ 
looking of the solidarity of the interests of communities, 
encourages lawlessness, and tends eventually toward 


256 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

anarchy. Even “when it does not go so far, such indi¬ 
vidualism hinders social organization and social efficiency, 
and so discredits democracy. To combat such a danger, 
democracy obviously needs the help of social religion. It 
must temper the liberty which it preaches by a religion 
of social obligation and of social solidarity. 

Group selfishness is another great foe of democracy. 
Just at the present time, it is perhaps the most immedi¬ 
ately threatening enemy of democratic institutions. There 
can, at least, be no doubt as to its danger to democracy; 
for nothing destroys social sympathy and good will so 
quickly as group egoism and group conflicts. Even po¬ 
litical partisanship which goes to the extent of destroying 
sympathy and hindering co-operation is destructive of 
democracy. A high degree of social tolerance is necessary 
for democracy to work at all, and a cordial co-operative 
spirit for its satisfactory working. In a true democracy, 
accordingly, minorities and majorities, whether they be 
political parties or economic classes, must retain a tol¬ 
erant, if not a fraternal attitude. Hence in a democracy, 
there must be no absolute rule even by the political ma¬ 
jority. The rights of minorities must always be respected, 
even the rights of the single “conscientious objector”; 
for democracy pre-supposes that a minority, or even a 
single individual, has a right to convert the whole group 
to his way of thinking, if he can. Otherwise, it denies 
its principle. True democracies, consequently, are never 
strong-handed or tyrannical in their methods. As soon as 
they become so, they convert themselves into autocracies, 
because they shut out some classes or individuals from 
participating in the formation of public opinion and of 
popular will. This does not mean that democracies have 
to tolerate positive wrong-doing any more than any other 


RELIGION AND POLITICAL LIFE 257 

form of society. It is only saying that by their very prin¬ 
ciples, democracies are tolerant toward differences of in¬ 
terest or of opinion among their members, and seek a 
synthesis of these differences through appeal to the higher 
interests of the community. 

How, then, can democracy combat group egoism and put 
an end to the selfish aggression of parties and classes ? Only 
through the cultivation of tolerance, sympathy, and under¬ 
standing between all the parties and classes which make 
up modern complex communities. The cultivation of 
social intelligence through enlightenment regarding social 
conditions will help much. But before a socially efficient 
imagination can bridge the misunderstandings and differ¬ 
ences of interest which exist among the parties and classes 
in complex societies, there must be systematic cultivation 
of social sympathy and good will. Idealistic social ethics 
and religion must come in as the ally of social informa¬ 
tion if we wish unfailing fraternity and good will in a 
large population with many diverse interests. The selfish¬ 
ness of individuals and of groups must be subordinated 
to devotion to the common welfare, and such an idealistic 
devotion must for the mass of men rest upon an essen¬ 
tially religious basis. 

All this becomes clear enough when we see class aggres¬ 
sion and class conflict actually destroying the unity of 
democratic societies. Then we perceive that it is lack of 
sympathy and understanding which leads one group to 
try to impose its will upon another. Such lack of sym¬ 
pathy and understanding may, of course, spring in part 
from mere ignorance and illustrate that need of knowl¬ 
edge of social conditions which we have spoken of as in¬ 
dispensable for the working of democratic institutions. 
But it is also frequently the result of a selfish attitude of 
one group toward another, and illustrates the lack of social 


258 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

good will in society. A dominant group, for example, 
which possesses power and privileges not infrequently 
refuses to give up any part of these to meet the needs of 
other groups. Here, clearly, it is the non-fraternal atti¬ 
tude of one group toward another, the lack of social good 
will, which destroys social unity and breeds conflict. But 
as we have already seen, when in society there is the open 
mind, general social intelligence, strong social sympathy, 
and a fraternal attitude, such conflicts between classes 
become practically impossible. Such socially developed 
democracy is manifestly the remedy, as we have already 
said, for the class conflicts and revolutions of violence 
which threaten our world. If our world is one of in¬ 
creasing class conflicts, it is only an indication that our 
democracy is still very imperfect. 

Here we have to note the principle to which all recent 
writers on democracy call frequent attention; and that is, 
that it is impossible to sustain democracy in our political 
life without accepting democracy as a conscious program 
for all other phases of our social life also. If our in¬ 
dustry, our religious life, our family life, and our educa¬ 
tion are non-democrat ic, we cannot hope to sustain democ¬ 
racy in political life; for government rests upon these 
other phases of the social life as its foundation. To illus¬ 
trate : it is not simply that poverty prevents the normal 
development of intelligence and character in some ele¬ 
ments of a population which makes it dangerous to democ¬ 
racy. It is even more, because it destroys the good will, 
sympathy, and equality which are essential to fraternal 
relations in a population. Again, a feudal or autocratic 
organization of industry breeds class conflict and menaces 
political democracy because it destroys good will and 
equality of opportunity. It is the lack of democracy in 


RELIGION AND POLITICAL LIFE 259 


our industry which prevents the formation of a common 
will in industrial groups—the only possible basis for the 
permanent settlement of differences between employers 
and employees. Again it is the lack of democracy in the 
relations between races which is the chief factor in breed¬ 
ing the racial antagonism that in the United States makes 
possible race riots and other inter-race maladjustments. 
Finally, it is the lack of democracy in our intimate social 
life which divides our society into strata, cliques, and 
circles, characterized by little understanding and sym¬ 
pathy and hence by little social cohesion. We cannot 
make political democracy a success without democracy in 
these wider social relations. Yet political democracy, 
itself, exists for the realization of this larger social de¬ 
mocracy, or else it has no meaning. To achieve such gen¬ 
eral democracy in all the relations of life, we evidently 
need, to accompany and sustain it, a religion of democ¬ 
racy, of social idealism, of enthusiasm for humanity. 

Perhaps the deadliest foe of all which democracy has 
is militarism, the use of armed force by one group to con¬ 
quer another group. This is the absolute negation of that 
social good will which we have said is one of its necessary 
foundations. It is a commonplace with students of social 
history, that war, through all the ages, has been one of 
the greatest enemies of democracy. All of the autocracies 
of the world, so far as anthropology and sociology can 
discover, have arisen in one way or another through war. 
The reason is not difficult to discover. Democracy, in 
order to succeed, requires a democratic setting; but mili¬ 
tarism tends toward the rule of force and toward the or¬ 
ganization of society on a basis of force instead of upon 
a basis of good will and rational likemindedness. Even 
defensive wars have more than once resulted in the sub- 



260 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


version of democracy both in government and in society 
at large. Hence democracy stands but little chance of 
success in a militaristic world organized upon the basis 
of armed force. National autonomy is threatened so long 
as there is not established international equality and good 
will. As long as nations have to arm to the teeth to pro¬ 
tect themselves from aggression by other nations, no na¬ 
tion can give proper attention to its domestic questions; 
military expenditures will eat up public resources, equal¬ 
ity of opportunity cannot be maintained, and democracy 
cannot be realized. The equal rights of nations, not less 
than of individuals, must be assured if democracy is to 
win out. 

But militarism among the nations cannot be ended as 
long as their relations are governed by the pagan princi¬ 
ples of power and self-interest. There must be developed 
an international mind and conscience which will demand 
justice and good will in international relations. But the 
equal rights of nations cannot be assured if international 
relations remain anarchic. If good will is to become the 
basis of human society, it must be organized internation¬ 
ally as well as within national groups. Without such 
organization, international conscience and good will can¬ 
not become effective. The triumph of democracy is 
bound up with the triumph of a democratic interna¬ 
tionalism which will put an end to competitive national 
armaments and to the rule of force in international rela¬ 
tions. Peace, social and international, is necessary for 
the safety of democracy; and for this reason the world 
must be federated, organized, for peace. 

Yet it is evident that no Association or League of Na¬ 
tions based upon national self-interest and force can give 
the world lasting peace. Peace, in order to endure be¬ 
tween nations as between individuals, must be based upon 


KELIGION AND POLITICAL LIFE 261 

justice, understanding, and good will. A peace of power 
and self-interest cannot long endure. Our world must 
achieve something more radical than a League of Nations 
to secure lasting peace. It must give up the spirit of 
international suspicion and selfishness; it must develop a 
spirit of international co-operation and good will. If the 
world is to be federated for peace, there must he cordial 
recognition of the fact that all the nations of mankind 
constitute but a single family, with the real identity of 
interests which we find among the members of a family. 
“Pagan” states which recognize only their own self- 
interest as their guide cannot possibly form such a union. 
Such a union can succeed only if backed both by world 
intelligence and by an active international good will. 
Democratic internationalism is possible, in other words, 
only if social religion leads the nations into the pathway 
of international justice and good will. Thus again we see 
that “the healing of the nations” must come through 
humanitarian religion, transforming our politics from a 
politics of powder and self-interest to one of the service of 
humanity. Only humanitarian religion can do this; but 
with the establishment of its ideals, international peace 
and co-operation will no longer be a problem. 

The democratic movement, then, depends for its final 
success upon the development in our social life of all those 
things which tend toward social justice, social sympathy, 
understanding, good will, and peace. It is only through 
these things that there can be opportunity for the full de¬ 
velopment of that rational likemindedness upon which the 
success of democracy, or the rule of public opinion must 
depend. In other words, to develop scientific knowledge 
and so diffuse its influence that it will make and guide 
public opinion requires the co-operative social spirit—the 


262 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


spirit of justice, good will, and peace in human relation¬ 
ships. And this, as we have said, requires the cultivation 
of the spirit of social idealism or social religion. The 
association of democracy and social religion is, then, no 
accident. “An ideal democracy/ 7 says Professor Cooley, 
“is in its nature, religious, and its true sovereign may be 
said to be the higher nature, or God, which it aspires to 
incarnate in human institutions.” 1 

While many of the higher ethical religions have been 
favorable to democracy, yet no religion has democracy so 
inwoven in its very nature as Christianity with its doc¬ 
trine of the fraternity and essential moral equality of all 
men. Christianity may be said to be the religion of 
democracy in that it teaches that the service of men, even 
of the weakest, is the service of God. If Jesus was not 
the first great democrat, he has been the great teacher of 
democracy in our western world through all the centuries. 
Even the most hostile and bitter critics of Christianity 
have had to recognize the essential democracy of Jesus 7 
teachings. 2 It is impossible for any sane man to impugn 
the democracy of one whose test of greatness and of worth 
was the service of all, even of the weakest. Jesus clearly 
had not only the ideal of a democratic society but the ideal 
of a fraternal democracy, the only kind, as we have seen, 
which will work in the long run. So clearly is the fraternal 
conception of democracy set forth in the Gospels that 
modern writers have been able to add but little to that 
conception. 

Just as in the chapter on the economic life, we found 
at its end that we had done little but elaborate the ethical 
standards of Jesus in regard to wealth, so again at the 

1 Op. cit., p. 205. 

3 E.g., Nietzsche. Edward Carpenter, who certainly cannot be ac¬ 
cused of any bias in favor of Christianity, acknowledges ( Pagan and 
Christian Creeds, p. 220) its “extraordinarily democratic tendency.” 



RELIGION AND POLITICAL LIFE 263 


end of this chapter we find that we have done little but 
elaborate Jesus’ ideal of democracy. Christians who take 
a social view of their religion at all, cannot fail to see 
this, and its corollary that the realization of social and 
political democracy is an essential part of the program 
of Christianity. This has often been denied; and the 
incident in which Jesus told the Jews to pay their taxes 
to the Roman government is cited to show that Jesus did 
not mean that his teachings were to have any hearing 
upon political life. But this is surely an absurd interpre¬ 
tation of that incident. Whatever Jesus intended to teach 
on that occasion, it is certain that he did not intend to 
teach that religion was to be divorced from the political 
life. 

The hunger and thirst of the modern world after democ¬ 
racy is surely a hunger and thirst after the kingdom of 
God,—if we make allowance for the perversions which un¬ 
avoidably creep into all great movements. The most hope¬ 
ful thing in the social and political life of our day, in 
other words, the thing which shows most unmistakably 
the influence of the religion of Jesus, is the democratic 
movement. It is surely time that religious people recog¬ 
nize that a fully democratic world will he a long step 
toward a Christian world; and on the other hand, those 
who believe in democracy should recognize that democ¬ 
racy can only he safe in a world which has Christian 
aims. It is Christian Democracy which must ultimately 
solve the social problem. 


CHAPTER X 


RELIGION AND SOCIAL PLEASURE 

A religion which is adapted to the needs of human 
life must have a clear and uncompromising doctrine con¬ 
cerning social pleasures and amusements. Individual 
character and the character of civilization depend quite 
as much upon the manner of spending leisure as upon the 
serious work of life. Hot serious occupations, indeed, but 
play and amusement too often have the preponderant role 
in determining moral character in the young. 1 Until men 
learn to spend their leisure nobly, to order their social 
pleasures rightly and rationally, it is idle to think that 
they can develop high moral character as individuals or 
create a civilization of beauty and righteousness. Hence, 
a social religion, whose chief concern we have seen to be 
the making of men, must fearlessly oppose all forms of 
social pleasure which degrade and brutalize the individual 
or which barbarize the standards of society. It must fur¬ 
nish active leadership in promoting ennobling forms of 
social pleasure. 

Social welfare is endangered by all forms of pleasure 
which tend to subvert or undermine the higher controls 
which civilization has developed over individual behavior. 
To be specific, whatever in social pleasures and amuse¬ 
ments weakens the family, corrupts morals, sneers at re- 

1 “The three master forces,” says Professor Ross, “fixing the mun¬ 
dane welfare of human beings are Work, Living Conditions, and Rec¬ 
reation” (in R. H. Edwards, Popular Amusements, p. 5. This book 
outlines the whole problem of public amusements and recreation and 
contains good bibliographies). 


264 


RELIGION AND SOCIAL PLEASURE 265 


ligion, hinders education, or tends toward the defiance of 
law or the creation of race and national prejudice, delays 
the realization of a Christian social order, and should 
receive the fearless condemnation of social religion. If 
social religion is a set of practical attitudes toward prac¬ 
tical problems, as we have said, then there is no more 
urgent problem in our society than the securing of ethical 
forms of play and amusement. 

For play and amusement are most necessary things in 
our social life. Upon them, not less than upon serious 
work, the whole structure of higher civilization has been 
built. Through play and amusement the young get not 
only physical and mental development, but also a very 
large part of their social education. Through play and 
amusement, the hard work of life is rendered tolerable 
for adults. The need for relaxation in our strenuous 
industrial and business life is especially intense. Through 
play and amusement the adult human mind gets not only 
much of its essential development but rest and refresh¬ 
ment, and the human body, also. These things are thus 
biological as well as social necessities, 1 and hence even 
in the briefest outline of an adequate social religion must 
receive considerable attention. Moreover, their possibili¬ 
ties in the development of human social life have not yet 
been thoroughly explored. There is good reason to be¬ 
lieve that when we have mastered the creative forces 
latent in play and amusement, education will be easier, 
social life more joyful, and civilization itself more hu¬ 
mane and beautiful. Social religion must seek to control 
social pleasures so that they will work in this socially con¬ 
structive direction. 


1 An admirable brief presentation of the sociological theory of 
recreation will be found in Ross’ Principles of Sociology , Chapter LII 
(pp. 604-616). 


266 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

Yet notoriously, social pleasures and amusements in 
our civilization have continued to remain on the pagan 
level. Too frequently they even show the same degrada¬ 
tion which characterized those of decadent Rome. This 
may he due in part perhaps to the animal impulses of 
original human nature which well up in all of us and 
especially in the young. These animal impulses hurry us 
hack, when over-stimulated, to the barbarous level of 
behavior. Original human nature, 1 we must always re¬ 
member, is animal nature. While there is no scientific 
warrant for a doctrine of original human depravity, as 
that doctrine has been ordinarily understood, yet science 
reveals that the original nature of man was non-moral 
because it was an animal nature. The civilized nature of 
man is wholly acquired, and is acquired only by intelli¬ 
gent effort and maintained only by constant vigilance. 
Hence the animal impulses of man’s original nature under 
certain conditions favor reversions to the savage and bar¬ 
barous levels of behavior. This must be borne in mind 
when we consider the nature of the amusements which 
civilized society can alford to approve. Many amusements 
in our present society cause the participants to lose the 
control which civilization has put upon the original ani¬ 
mal impulses, or primitive passions, of man. Society 
cannot afford to tolerate this. Social sanity requires us 
in all the relations of life to beware how we release these 
primitive passions, and this is especially true in our social 
pleasures and amusements. 

But the greater reason, by far, for the prevalence of 

1 Professor Cooley and also Professors Park and Burgess (in their 
Introduction to the Science of Sociology ) use the term “human na¬ 
ture” to mean the nature acquired by man in association with his 
fellows, especially in the primary groups. To differentiate, we have 
used the term “original nature” to mean the inborn, hereditary 
nature of man, which according to evolution was an animal nature. 


RELIGION AND SOCIAL PLEASURE 267 

pagan standards in the social pleasures and amusements 
of our present civilization is the survival of those stand¬ 
ards in our social habits and traditions. As we have seen, 
the whole tradition of our civilization has remained 
largely pagan down to the present in spite of the nominal 
acceptance of Christianity. Imbedded in the very heart of 
our civilization, we have seen, is the tradition that power 
and pleasure are the chief ends of life, a tradition char¬ 
acteristic of barbarism. Hence, self-indulgence and the 
gratification of animal appetites and impulses in socially 
destructive ways is one of those surviving traditions of 
barbarism among us of which we have not yet been able 
to rid ourselves. 

There have been many reasons, of course, why we have 
been unable to get rid of this tradition and put our stand¬ 
ards of social pleasure and amusement on a Christian 
basis. One is the survival of the other traditions of bar¬ 
barism among us which we have already pointed out, 1 such 
as autocracy, militarism, economic exploitation, and the 
like. Another reason is that the tradition of barbarous 
self-indulgence and unsocial gratification of animal im¬ 
pulses and appetites has become associated with certain 
forms of economic profit-making which deliberately aim 
not only to keep alive this tradition, but to make it domi¬ 
nate social pleasure and amusement in general. 2 It is 
especially commercialized pleasures and amusements, in 
other words, which present a peculiarly threatening prob¬ 
lem in our civilization. Too often, as Miss Addams says, 
the “Anglo-Saxon city has turned over the provision for 

1 See Chapters III and IV. 

2 The deeper reason, therefore, for so many apparent reversions 
to the animal level in social pleasures is our defective social sys¬ 
tem, especially our defective social control. This problem is, of 
course, the problem of the whole book, but see especially again Chap¬ 
ters VII and VIII. See the argument beginning on page 268 also. 


268 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


public recreation to the most evil-minded and most un¬ 
scrupulous members of the community ” 1 

We should beware, however, of thinking that by getting 
rid of the element of private profit in amusements we 
would thereby solve the problem of rational social pleas¬ 
ure. All the evidence points to the opposite conclusion. 
Under all conditions of culture individual men have been 
prone to indulge their animal appetites at the expense of 
society; and we know of no social state in which this tend¬ 
ency has been held in restraint without some form of 
social discipline. Wherever social discipline has decayed, 
riotous forms of pleasure and amusement have, as it were, 
spontaneously broken forth, probably not so much because 
of original human nature, however, as because of the sur¬ 
vival, as we have already pointed out, of certain tradi¬ 
tions favoring selfish indulgence. Yet we must admit 
that human nature with its animal impulses must be 
favorable to these traditions of selfish indulgence, or else 
it would not accept them so readily. 

Here then we see the real reason for the prevalence of 
so many degrading forms of pleasure and amusement in 
the modern world: it is the decay of social discipline. 
'Anything that favors the lowering of social morale, in a 
word, favors to some extent the recrudescence of brutaliz¬ 
ing pleasures and amusements. We have, to some extent, 
lost our social morale, because in the new and complex 
world in which we live old forms of social discipline have 
proved inadequate and have decayed. We need a new and 
higher morale, as we have already pointed out, 2 3 to meet 

1 The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, p. 7. The conclusion 
of Miss Addams that proper provision for rational recreation should 
be a public function is one to which practically all sociologists and 

social workers would agree. 

3 See Chapter II and Chapter V. 


RELIGION AND SOCIAL PLEASURE 269 


the subtle temptations which modern life with its wealth 
and power too often affords; and nowhere is this need 
more in evidence than in our social pleasures and amuse¬ 
ments. Our world presents the amazing spectacle of more 
lives offered upon the altars of pleasure than upon those 
of war, famine, and pestilence combined. The lives ut¬ 
terly ruined, or their social usefulness at least destroyed, 
by the pursuit of foolish pleasures are so numerous that 
no attempt is made to keep track of them. Here we must 
reckon, for the most part, the victims of drink, of sexual 
immorality, of gambling, and of many other low forms of 
sport and amusement. The wasted energy is beyond com¬ 
putation. Obviously civilization cannot go forward with 
such a drag. A new social discipline must be provided 
which will safeguard the young and the adult alike from 
the insidious unsocializing influences of low forms of 
pleasure and amusement. In part this social discipline 
may be provided by purely secular education; but social 
religion, as we have seen, 1 must be the chief reliance in 
any group which desires to maintain a high social morale. 
Hence the social education of the young should be com¬ 
pleted and crowned by an adequate religious education if 
we expect them to be able to resist the temptations to low 
forms of pleasure and amusement which go with wealth 
and leisure as well as with poverty and overwork. 

It will be at once objected that religion has conspicu¬ 
ously failed as a means of securing wholesome and ra¬ 
tional social pleasures and amusements in the past. Re¬ 
ligion, it may be said, has always wrestled with this 
problem, and if it has not succeeded in the past, what 
right have we to think that it will be of any help for the 
future? Again and again, to use the Spanish proverb, 

1 See p. 179. 



270 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

“Human nature has been driven out with a broomstick 
and has come back with a pitchfork.” The prohibitions 
and taboos which religion has imposed upon social pleas¬ 
ures and amusements have proved to be vain and have 
obscured rather than clarified the problem. The reply is 
that obviously the religions of the past, while right in 
their apprehensions in regard to social danger from un¬ 
socialized forms of pleasure and amusement, have not been 
scientifically guided; and that there is no reason to argue 
that because undeveloped religions have failed in solving 
this problem this will necessarily be the case with a fully 
developed social religion. No doubt the religions of the 
past, and historical Christianity in particular, have made 
the mistake of taking too negative an attitude towards 
social pleasures and amusements. 1 They have seen their 
danger and have gone to the opposite extreme of endors¬ 
ing asceticism, which we may define as the doctrine that 
all the animal impulses of man are in themselves evil. 
Asceticism does not help to solve the problem of social 
pleasure and amusement because it gives rise to an almost 
entirely negative and repressive attitude toward these 
necessary elements in a normal social life. A social re¬ 
ligion working in harmony with social science will adopt 
towards them a positive, constructive attitude. 

This is not saying, however, that a social discipline 
which is adequate to deal with this problem of social 
pleasures and amusements will not have its negative and 
repressive side. This is involved in every form of social 
control over every phase of social life, or else there could 
he no control. Indeed, social science with its doctrine of 
social control over all the conditions of life, and social 

1 Religious people have often forgotten, to borrow a phrase from 
Miss Addams, “that recreation is stronger than vice and that recrea¬ 
tion alone can stifle the lust for vice” (The Spirit of Youth and the 
City Streets, p. 20). 


RELIGION AND SOCIAL PLEASURE 271 

religion with its ideal of a perfected human society point 
unquestionably to what we might perhaps all agree to call 
a New Puritanism, if so many shallow minds did not 
harbor a prejudice against the word. The New Puri¬ 
tanism which is bound to come, if social progress con¬ 
tinues, will not be like the old Puritanism, which was 
accused of taking its pleasures sorrowfully; but it will be 
like it in that it will demand the purging of existing 
Christianity from its pagan elements and the conforming 
of personal conduct to higher spiritual and social stand¬ 
ards. These standards for the New Puritanism, however, 
will come from modern science, and not from mistaken 
ascetic ideals of life. 

A single illustration will suffice. Science is determin¬ 
ing exact standards regarding the relation of alcoholic 
beverages to human welfare. When these standards have 
been determined, unless we are going to remain in a bar¬ 
barous and unscientific stage of social development, they 
will unquestionably be accepted by the social conscience 
and enforced by the standards of society. People may 
plead for alcoholic beverages as much as they please on 
the score of individual liberty, social pleasure, or social 
congeniality. Scientifically determined standards are, 
nevertheless, bound to rule social policies in regard to 
alcoholic beverages sooner or later if social progress con¬ 
tinues. The same thing must be said regarding those 
forms of pleasure which are connected with sex. 

The social sciences are steadily moving forward in the 
determination of rational social standards along all lines 
of social pleasure. There is, indeed, no necessity of dis¬ 
cussing these standards here at length and in detail. The 
literature of the social sciences affords ample discussions 
along this line, and we can expect that scientific research, 
if allowed to proceed, will establish clear social standards 


272 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


regarding all forms of social pleasure and amusement 
within a generation or two, as it has already done for the 
use of alcoholic beverages. The main thing to insist upon 
is that here again social religion must work with social 
science to secure rational control over the whole of human 
life in order that a better human world may come into 
existence. 

But certain general principles which should guide us 
and which should be emphasized by social religion may 
be pointed out. The specific standards demanded by social 
science for the control of social pleasures we shall not dis¬ 
cuss; but the mere general principles which are as old 
as humanitarian ethics and religion, need constant re¬ 
emphasis if religion is to function socially. What are 
these principles? We may lay down at least four, which, 
however much their specific application may be debated, 
would be unquestioned by sound social science or social 
religion. 

The first of these general principles which should guide 
us in deciding what social pleasures a Christian civilized 
society can afford to tolerate is that pleasure should 
always be recreative. That is, social pleasures should be 
such as to build up body and mind. They should rest, 
restore, recreate. One of the severest indictments against 
many of the social pleasures of present society, as we have 
seen, is that they wear out body and mind, sapping the 
energies of those who engage in them. Such pleasures of 
course do not prove truly pleasurable in the long run. 
They are to be especially condemned because they de¬ 
stroy that very surplus of physical and spiritual energy 
from which all the higher achievements of civilization 
must come. Moreover, they are wholly unnecessary. 
There is an abundance of simple pleasures which restore 


RELIGION AND SOCIAL PLEASURE 273 


and energize both body and mind. Such, for example, are 
outdoor athletic sports when rightly conducted. The re¬ 
cent tendency of our civilization to encourage the develop¬ 
ment of athletics and of outdoor games and amusements 
is undoubtedly a tendency in a most wholesome direction. 
Especially should guided and supervised play for children 
in the parks and playgrounds of our large cities deserve 
the hearty commendation and support of all socially 
minded persons. 1 

But this first principle, that social pleasures should be 
recreative in their effects, is not sufficient for us as a 
criterion to judge whether a form of pleasure is adapted 
to social needs. Pleasures may be recreative for the indi¬ 
vidual and yet harmful to social welfare. The effects 
upon others must always be taken into consideration, even 
upon the weakest member of society. Social obligation 
is paramount to individual interests in this matter of 
social pleasures as well as in all other matters. Hence, 
our second principle which is that social pleasures should 
be unselfish, that is, controlled by a sense of social obliga¬ 
tion. After all, it cannot profit us in the highest sense to 
destroy or injure others in order that we may have pleas¬ 
ure. That violates, as we have seen, the fundamental law 
of human association. Hence social pleasures and amuse¬ 
ments should be those which the community can approve 
and which can be shared by all. Accordingly they should 
be open and public so far as possible, and free of access 
to all. 

This does not mean that social pleasures and amuse¬ 
ments should be taken out of the home but rather they 


1 Statistics show that wherever these supervised playgrounds exist 
in large cities there has been a marked decrease of juvenile delin¬ 
quency. 


274 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

should be such that all homes may participate in them. 
They should be such, moreover, as to serve the welfare of 
every class in the community and not just one class. They 
should build up, in a word, the life of the community, of 
society, of humanity, as well as restore the body and mind 
of individuals. Selfish pleasures, like exhausting pleas¬ 
ures, are unnecessary and short-sighted. There is an abun¬ 
dance of pleasures which we can share with others and 
which, because they are so shared, give us more lasting 
pleasure as well as add to the happiness of the world. 

This brings out the third principle by which we should 
judge social pleasures and amusements, and that is that 
they should be educational . We mean that they should 
tend to build up the right sort of social character in indi¬ 
viduals. More and more sociologists are coming to agree, 
we have noted, that the best way to judge institutions is 
by their educative effects upon human personality. Noth¬ 
ing would do so much to straighten out the problem of 
social pleasures and amusements as to adopt this same 
criterion for judging them; and surely a society which is 
aiming at a higher culture must adopt this criterion. Un¬ 
less pleasures and amusements socialize, develop higher 
intelligence and character in individuals, they easily be¬ 
come dangerous to higher social values. Some may say 
that if all social pleasures and amusements were educa¬ 
tive, they would lose their recreational value; but this is 
not so. Plainly athletics, games, music, the drama, and 
all other legitimate amusements may be morally educative 
and yet at the same time highly recreational. Indeed, 
creative effort itself, while always highly educational, has 
been found to be entirely consistent with proper recreation 
for both children and adults. We need to put more intelli¬ 
gence into our social pleasures. There is little excuse, 



RELIGION AND SOCIAL PLEASURE 275 


except the general barbarity of our civilization, for the 
low moral and intellectual plane of prevalent social 
pleasures and amusements. 

This brings us to the fourth principle which should 
guide us in the selection of social pleasures, that they 
should be spiritual; that is, they should not be merely 
sensual or animal, but the higher mental and social ele¬ 
ments should dominate in them. Whether the pleasures 
be those of commonplace life or of art, they are saved 
from animalism only by the dominance in them of the 
higher mental and social elements. The spiritual, how¬ 
ever, is not something apart from the things of which we 
have already spoken, but rather a proper combination of 
them. Pleasures that are recreative and at the same time 
unselfish and highly intelligent are spiritual. They make 
toward the higher development of the mental and social 
traits of man, or, as we say, of his spiritual life. The 
validity of this ideal of social pleasure has often been 
denied, but it may be pointed out that the pleasures of 
which we are not ashamed, which we go out of our way 
to promote, are of just this character. Such pleasures 
are consistent with the highest social religion. 

If all of our social pleasures ana amusements were 
truly recreative, unselfish, educative, and spiritual, there 
would be little or no problem in connection with them, 
except how we might best promote them. But our social 
pleasures and amusements are not now of this character. 
IIow can we lift them to this plane? In part we have 
already indicated ways of doing this. But the problem 
remains how certain forms of social pleasure may be re¬ 
deemed and put upon a highly moral and social plane. 

The church must take its full part in this redemptive 


276 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


work. If provision for rational social pleasure and amuse¬ 
ment is to be a public function, then such provisions can 
best be developed in many cases in connection with the 
churches and schools. Just how much each church should 
provide for the wholesome recreation and amusement of 
its attendants depends, of course, upon local circumstances. 
The church in the crowded conditions of city life will 
naturally develop in the direction of making direct pro¬ 
vision for these. So, too, probably the church in the 
isolated rural regions. But whether the church under¬ 
takes directly such activities or not, it is the function of 
social religion to provide leadership in such matters. It 
must undertake the redemption of the amusements and 
pleasures of young people in particular. To this end 
churches must concern themselves with promoting facili¬ 
ties for wholesome recreation. Social religion must in 
this matter, as in so many others, lead especially through 
creating public opinion and public conscience. That is 
its true function, and the chief method of its program of 
social redemption. 

It may be suggested that if more of the element of art 
entered into our social pleasures and amusements we 
would thereby regenerate them and more easily adapt 
them to the needs of higher civilization. If the dance, 
for example, which is now so frequently associated with 
indecency and immorality, could be put upon the level 
of true art, most of the objectionable features now so fre¬ 
quently associated with it would probably disappear. The 
stage and the moving picture show need quite as much to 
be touched by the spirit of true art to effect their regen¬ 
eration as to be made regardful of the principles of 
morality. The spirit of art alone cannot, of course, pro¬ 
duce the socially right; but it is certain that true art and 


RELIGION AND SOCIAL PLEASURE 277 

the spirit of social idealism may work hand in hand. 
Nothing would help therefore more to solve the problem 
of social pleasures and amusements than to infuse in our 
people of every class a love for and appreciation of true 
art. If we had this love and appreciation of true art 
reigning in our civilization, it would he found that the 
pursuit and enjoyment of the fine arts would spontane¬ 
ously tend to eliminate many of the more barbarous social 
pleasures and amusements to which people now devote 
their energies. 

Many problems concerning recreation and amusements, 
which now trouble us, would straighten themselves out if 
we could put our social pleasures on the high plane which 
we have described. We would, for example, have little 
or no problem concerning the proper use of Sunday, and 
we should need no Sunday “blue laws” to prohibit pleas¬ 
ures and amusements upon that day. It must be obvious 
that pleasures and amusements which are demoralizing on 
Sunday are equally demoralizing on week days, and only 
a very inconsistent civilization could prohibit them on 
Sundays and tolerate them on week days. Pleasures that 
are at once recreative, unselfish, educative, and spiritual 
are manifestly appropriate for the Christian Sunday or 
Sabbath. For the Sabbath, as Jesus said, is made for 
man. This is not saying, of course, that it is not wise and 
even socially necessary for a people to set apart one day 
out of seven primarily for the consideration of moral and 
religious truth. The Christian Sabbath is not primarily 
a “recreation day,” or a “rest day,” except as rest is se¬ 
cured by attention to the higher things of life. It is pri¬ 
marily a day for education in these higher things, with 
which social religion concerns itself. But there should 
be the same place in it for rational social pleasures and 


278 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

amusements as on other days. Week days are not pri¬ 
marily for social pleasures and amusements, neither are 
Sundays. Both week days and Sundays should be dedi¬ 
cated to the serious purposes of life; Sundays, to the 
higher spiritual life, week days, to the ordinary business 
of life. We cannot afford to tolerate on week days, how¬ 
ever, pleasures and amusements which will detract from 
and perhaps undo all that we gain in a spiritual way on 
Sundays. Pleasures and amusements on Sundays should, 
of course, be consistent with the high purposes of the day, 
but this is best achieved not by repressive legislation but 
by appeal to the conscience of the individual. We should, 
at any rate, not tolerate on week days pleasures and 
amusements which we are afraid to have enjoyed on 
Sundays. 

Plainly the principles which should guide us in our 
choice of social pleasures and amusements, that we have 
just laid down, are those implicit in Jesus’ teachings. A 
religion and ethics of the service of God through the 
service of humanity, such as Jesus taught, obviously im¬ 
plies that in our pleasures and amusements we shall seek 
to build up the total life of humanity. This we cannot 
do if our pleasures and amusements are such as to weaken 
or destroy bodily strength, injure the rights or the hap¬ 
piness of others, stultify intelligence, or encourage the 
sensual and animal in us. Jesus has often been accused 
of being ascetic in his outlook on life; but there is little 
or nothing in his life and teachings to warrant such a 
charge. He not only mingled in the social life around 
him but shared in the social pleasures and amusements 
of his time to such an extent that he brought down upon 
himself the censure of the moral rigorists of his day. 
This censure was, however, quite as unwarranted as the 


RELIGION AND SOCIAL PLEASURE 279 


present charge of asceticism. The teaching and life of 
Jesus seem to illustrate so perfectly the normal place of 
social pleasure in a normal life that again modern science 
can add but little to the fundamental principles which he 
made evident. 

It must be true Christianity, or the religion of Jesus, 
which will solve the problem of social pleasures and 
amusements in our society. When our social life is suf¬ 
fused with the spirit of Jesus’ teachings, there will be no 
perplexing problem left in regard to such matters. Not 
legislation, but religious and moral education, education 
in the principles of social religion and ethics as laid down 
by Jesus, must solve this problem. 


CHAPTER XI 


THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH 

The church is the institution organized to embody con¬ 
cretely the religious life of society. It is co-ordinate in 
importance with religion itself; for if religion is to he 
a vital influence in social life it must find concrete em¬ 
bodiment in some institution. Only through suitable 
organization can the religious life express itself and be 
developed in the mass of individuals. While it is a great 
mistake to make organization an end in itself, yet it is an 
equally great mistake to think that the religious life should 
not be organized. 1 To some extent, it has always been 
organized, because the religion of the most primitive peo¬ 
ples is of a congregational or communal character. The 
more highly developed a religion is, the more pronounced 
will become its institutional character and the more com¬ 
pletely will it become organized. A religious life with¬ 
out organization -would be non-co-operative, non-social, 
and individualistic. It could not be representative of 
social religion in the fullest sense. 2 It would be like a 
political or economic life which was unorganized. Just 
as men find organization indispensable in their political 
and economic life, so too men find organization indis¬ 
pensable in the religious life. 

1 See Chapter V, p. 131. 

2 It should be remembered that developed religion is always a social 
product and functions socially. See Chapter II, 

280 


OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH 281 

The church is the institution which stands for the or¬ 
ganized religious life of men. Without it, that life would 
be powerless and utterly incapable of transforming human 
society. The church exists to serve the great interests of 
religion in society, that is, to serve those ideal values for 
which religion should stand. Therefore the social func¬ 
tion of the church is to conserve and propagate religious 
and moral ideals in human society. Its great business is 
to bring before men the demands of the higher spiritual 
life. Its function, in a word, is to be the “spiritual 
power” in human society. Other activities than the 
teaching and propagation of moral and religious ideals 
may, of course, demand its attention; but that that is its 
main business cannot be doubted. 

Viewed from this standpoint, the church is the most 
important of all human institutions. The Christian 
church in particular is charged with the task, not only 
of creating Christian character in individuals, but of 
establishing the kingdom of God upon earth. However 
imperfectly it has performed its task, it is, in a sense, the 
most remarkable of institutions. For here is an institu¬ 
tion devoted avowedly to social idealism, to the re-making 
of human character and of human institutions themselves 
in conformity with the divine ideal. Whatever the faults 
of the church, surely no other human institution bears 
such witness to the idealistic aspirations of mankind. It 
is no accident, therefore, that many of the noblest, most 
aspiring, most unselfish spirits of our race have found 
their work in the upbuilding of this institution; and we 
shall try to show that it was not foolishness on their part, 
even though the institution itself was inadequately or¬ 
ganized to achieve its purpose, and though they were un¬ 
guided by scientific principles in working out the difficult 
tasks which they set before themselves. 


282 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

But all institutions have an insidious tendency to forget 
the purposes for which they were originally organized and 
to set themselves up as ends in themselves, or else be di¬ 
verted to side issues. Historically, as we have seen, this 
has often been the case with the Christian church. In¬ 
deed it could not have been otherwise, because the church 
is a human institution and subject to all of the errors 
which its human constituents may make. Institutions, as 
we have seen, like individuals, necessarily learn by the 
trial and error method. Yet it would seem that the Chris¬ 
tian church should, by this time, have learned enough by 
the mistakes of the past to set itself square with its stu¬ 
pendous task. 

There is urgent need in our world to-day of a new, re¬ 
united, re-vitalized Christian church, which shall take up 
anew, with the faith of its founder, the task of redeeming 
the world. Never was the church less fitted in some ways, 
however, for this great task than at the present time. 
Divided within herself, with her faith often cold, with 
pagan standards and worldly interests too often ascendant 
within her, it is no wonder that some of her noblest spirits 
despair of the church’s being equal to her opportunity. It 
is not that the church is worse—for certainly never before 
were there so many within her who perceived clearly the 
truth—but that the opportunity and the responsibility 
have suddenly become so much greater. 

Unless there is renewed vision, renewed consecration to 
the work, and new and clear understanding of all facts 
and forces, the church cannot succeed in its stupendous 
task of redeeming the world. Yet if it fails, we have no 
good ground for believing that any other institution can 
succeed. The church, as the torch bearer of social ideal¬ 
ism, must lead the way if other institutions are to follow 
in the work of the social redemption of mankind. What 



OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH 283 

then must the church do to fit herself for leadership in 
this supreme work which is committed to her charge? 

First of all, the church must become united within 
itself. It cannot preach a gospel of reconciliation suc¬ 
cessfully unless it can illustrate that doctrine in its own 
life. It cannot reunite a divided world as long as it re¬ 
mains divided and warring within itself. It cannot ex¬ 
pect to bring about the federation of the world for peace 
as long as peace and co-operation do not reign within 
itself. This does not mean that there shall not he liberty 
within the church. The unity which the world demands 
of the church is a unity of co-operation in the work of 
saving mankind. Such unity will leave liberty in non- 
essentials, such as denominational theological beliefs and 
ritual practices. The unity of the church in the work of 
redeeming mankind must be a practical unity, a genuine 
brotherhood in service, which transcends and tolerates dif¬ 
ferences in these non-essential matters. 

Such unity should be conceived in a broad enough spirit 
to include all who are working for the establishment of a 
Christian world. Not only should it be possible for all 
branches and denominations of the Christian church to 
form such a unity, but there is no reason why any church 
organization which is willing to work for this end should 
be excluded from such a working unity. Not only should 
Catholic and Protestant find it possible to co-operate 
within such a church universal, but also Jew and Chris¬ 
tian. It must be remembered that the Jewish Synagogue 
is the mother of the Christian church, and that the re¬ 
ligion of the later prophets of the Old Testament is essen¬ 
tially the religion of Jesus. Moreover, at the present 
time, there are many Jews who are more Christian than 
many so-called Christians, and many Christians whose 


284 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


religion is more that of the Old Testament than that of 
the New. On the other hand, it is unfortunately true 
that there are still many Jews who shy at the very word 
“Christian,” or at anything to which it may be applied, 
so much do they still confuse genuine Christianity—the 
teaching of Jesus—with the persecutions which they have 
suffered at the hands of those who wrongly claimed to 
represent it. We may agree, indeed, with a leading 
Jewish scholar 1 when he says, “The long waited for recon¬ 
ciliation between Judaism and Christianity will come 
when the teachings of Jesus become the accepted maxims 
of human conduct.” Not until Christians become more 
completely Christian, in a word, can we expect the Jewish 
church to see the truth that is in Jesus and to unite 
heartily with all Christian denominations in working for 
a Christian world. Already there are signs, however, of 
such a movement, and it is certain that nothing would 
hasten it so much as the full establishment of the religion 
of Jesus within the Christian church. For, as one of their 
liberal religious thinkers says, 2 “The Jew cannot help 
hoping that Jesus may yet serve as a bond of union be¬ 
tween Jew and Christian, once his teaching is better 
known and the bane of misunderstanding at last is re¬ 
moved from his words and his ideal.” 

As to Protestant and Roman and Greek Catholic, there 
should no longer be difficulty in their working together 
at the common task of the church. Liberalism is slowly 
but surely rising in both the Roman and Greek Catholic 
churches; and in both the essential teaching of Jesus is 
coming so to the front that they sometimes put to shame 
Protestant churches by the advanced programs of social 
justice which they put forward. Any one who knows these 

1 Professor Morris Jastrow. 

3 Rabbi H. G. Enelow, A Jewish View of Jesus, p. 181. 


OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH 285 


churches knows that within them are found many of the 
truest Christians of our present world. However much 
Protestants may feel themselves forced to criticize and 
condemn the ecclesiastical organization and methods of 
these older denominations, they should perceive the true 
Christian spirit at work in these churches, encourage it 
hy their fraternal co-operation, and trust to it to work 
out the problems of internal reorganization and regenera¬ 
tion. Great movements within the Roman and Greek 
Catholic churches attest that such internal regeneration 
is already going on, and Protestants should remember that 
they have enough to do in setting their own household in 
order. Again we may paraphrase and say, when the teach¬ 
ings of Jesus become the accepted maxims of all churches, 
the long waited for reconciliation between Protestants and 
Catholics will come. Obviously the way to bring this 
about is not to debate or argue, but to enter into such 
relations of co-operation as the spirit of love which Jesus 
taught would prompt. 

As to the relations of Christianity and the non-Chris¬ 
tian religions, we have already seen that there is every 
reason to believe that when the true Christian spirit once 
fully dominates the Christian church, it will gradually 
permeate and transform the non-Christian religions so far 
as they are capable of surviving under conditions of true 
civilization. As Dr. Josiah Strong said, “When Chris¬ 
tendom has been Christianized, we may expect the con¬ 
version of pagandom—and not until then. Christian 
churches should therefore not hesitate to co-operate with 
non-Christian bodies in the attainment of Christian ends, 
as that is the best way to develop in both the true spirit 
of Christianity. Deeds always count for more than pro- 

1 The New World Religion, p. 503. 


286 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

fessions in human life. Indeed, as we have already 
pointed out, 1 the very basis for membership in Christian 
churches themselves should be this practical co-operation 
with the church in Christian work. It should be an in¬ 
telligent willingness to co-operate with the church in its 
work of redeeming mankind rather than a submissive 
acceptance of theological dogmas. It should mean for the 
individual full personal consecration to the Christian 
cause through the service of mankind. 

Many of the best minds of the church shrink from this 
broadly tolerant Christian attitude. They fear that it 
may lead to the toleration of wrong and of error, or at 
least to a flabby and shallow religious life. Nothing could 
probably be further from the truth than such a supposi¬ 
tion. It is the practical social attitude in religion more 
than anything else which will drive paganism out of our 
churches. It has been theological Christianity which has 
tolerated practical paganism in the church, covering it 
with the cloak of respectability by making the acceptance 
of a theological creed count for so much. The result has 
been, to quote an orthodox Christian minister, “What we 
call the Christian church is more or less that only in 
name. The most outstanding fundamentals of Chris¬ 
tianity, as Jesus taught it, have either been so completely 
lacking in it or so adulterated with self-seeking that they 
have been able to function but little.” Such a condition 
can be overcome only through the teaching and practice 
of an aggressive social Christianity—through reawakening 
the spirit of Jesus in every church member. 

The “hospital” conception of the church, which has so 
disgraced Protestantism, should be given up. The pri¬ 
mary business of the church is not to heal the physically 

1 Chapter V, p. 159. 


OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH 287 


or spiritually sick or to give spiritual or physical comfort 
to its members. Such a conception makes the work of the 
church individualistic and selfish; and such individualism 
and selfishness in religion is hostile to the spirit of Chris¬ 
tianity and perpetuates paganism in the church. 1 The 
ministry of the church to the individual is incidental to 
its main work, which is that of the establishment of the 
kingdom of God among men. Like an army, the church 
will look after the health and welfare, physical and 
spiritual, of its members; hut like an army, it will con¬ 
stantly remind its members that their individual welfare 
and comfort is not the chief end sought. 

Even the conception of the church as an individualistic 
educational institution is quite inadequate. Individual 
religious and moral education is, to he sure, the founda¬ 
tion of all of its work. Without this foundation it could 
not become an organized spiritual power for the redemp¬ 
tion of mankind. It must devote itself to the ethical and 
religious culture of every member in order that every 
member may be fit for the largest human service. Until 
Christianity is effectively taught to every one who is 
brought under the influence of the church, we cannot ex¬ 
pect that Christian ideals will be carried out. Much 
evidence goes to show that Christianity has never been 
effectively taught or even clearly presented to the mass 
of church members, to say nothing of the mass of the 
people at large. 2 “We have known,” says Professor Coe, 

1 See Chapters III, IV and V. 

3 The Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook of the 
Federal Council of Churches in America published a report of their 
careful investigation of the religious condition of the men in the 
American army, entitled Religion Among American Men: As Revealed, 
by a Study of Conditions in the Army, The gist of this report is 
given in the following quotation: “If there is any one point upon 
which the chaplains agree it is in regard to the widespread ignorance 


288 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


“that spiritual illiteracy abounds in the churches them¬ 
selves. The ideas of church members concerning the sig¬ 
nificance of their membership, like the ideas of the gen¬ 
eral populace concerning the Christian religion, are partly 
vague and partly miscellaneous and unco-ordinated.” 1 

Every Christian church should manifestly be a teach¬ 
ing church. From one point of view, this is its supreme 
work. Only we need to remember that teaching is not 
an end in itself. The end which is sought by teaching, 
after all, is a practical end—the transformation of human 
conduct and of human institutions. Education is a means 
and a method, not an end in itself. The church must be 
truly an educational institution, and until it recognizes 
itself, and is recognized as a fundamental educational in¬ 
stitution, the church will not function rightly, nor will 
human society be right. 

The relation between the church and the school is there¬ 
fore a very close one, and should be much closer than that 
which exists in American society at the present day. We 
need not go to the extreme of making the church absorb 
the school or the school absorb the church, as that is op¬ 
posed to the principle of the division of labor in social 
evolution, which holds for institutions as well as for indi¬ 
viduals. But there can be and should be the closest co¬ 
operation between the school and church. The church has, 
in a sense, the most important education of all to carry 
out for our youth—the education in the higher social 

as to the meaning of Christianity. . . . We might well hope that 
in a “Christian’’ country men generally, even those without any 
allegiance to Christ or His Church, would know what Christianity is. 
Chaplains say that they do not know. And they go beyond that and 
say that men nominally within the Church, men who have been to 
Christian schools , are in much the same condition. The Church as 
a teacher has fanted to instruct its own membership.” (Italics mine.) 

1 Journal of Religion, January, 1921, pp. 20-22, in a very striking 
article on “The Religious Breakdown of the Ministry.” 


OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH 289 

values, in moral and religious ideals. Every church should 
therefore organize itself as a teaching church. Its classes, 
moreover, should not be merely for children and adoles¬ 
cents. The whole church should be kept constantly mo¬ 
bilized for study—the study of the principles of Chris¬ 
tianity on the one hand, and of the actually attained 
Christian living or the lack of it in the world, on the 
other. Thus Christianity and the cause and the work 
of the church could be kept constantly before the mind of 
every church member. In such a church, every individual 
would he in training for the larger work of the church 
and the maximum number would be kept fit for that 
larger service. 

It is evident that the work of the church in the educa¬ 
tion of individuals is so completely hound up with the 
larger work of which we are about to speak that it can¬ 
not be separated from it, and we shall have to return again 
to this subject as the foundation of all of the work of the 
church. Before leaving this topic we cannot but remark 
that there would he little or no need for emotional re¬ 
vivals to call the attention of men to the value of Chris¬ 
tian living, if every child could he brought up in the 
church and given Christian ideals of life to start with. 
Under such circumstances there would he no need of those 
emotional crises which we have come to associate with the 
very word “conversion.” Such conversions, psychology 
shows, are unnecessary in the proper development of the 
moral and religious life, are largely a waste of energy, 
and often ineffective for the production of true Christian 
living. 

If the business of the church cannot be summed up as 
looking after the physical and spiritual welfare of its 
members* or even as educating them into Christian ideas 


290 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

and ideals, what then is its work ? Plainly its final work, 
as we have so frequently said, is the social redemption of 
mankind—the creation of a Christian world. But this 
means something more than a ministry to individuals as 
individuals. It means the transformation of customs and 
institutions. It means the shaping of the policies and 
conduct of groups as well as of individuals. Beyond the 
church’s mission of individual evangelism is the church’s 
mission of social evangelism. The subject of redemption 
is not the individual, but the world of individuals. IIow 
can the church undertake this larger work of social con¬ 
trol to secure the social redemption of mankind? Mani¬ 
festly the church must undertake to deal not only with 
individuals, hut with mass movements and the forces that 
lie hack of mass movements, which we vaguely call public 
sentiment, public opinion, and popular will. The church 
must undertake the work of creating conscience, a public 
conscience, upon the behavior of groups as well as of in¬ 
dividuals. 1 Not until the church is willing to grapple 
with this problem, which we might call that of “Christian 
statesmanship,” can it create a Christian world. 

It must be evident to all who desire a Christian world, 2 
that if such a world is ever to become a reality, the church, 
animated by the true spirit of Christianity, must assume 
the moral leadership of the opinion of mankind. A Chris- 

1 This conception, of the work of the church was first plainly set 
forth by Dr. Samuel Zane Batten in an article on “The Church as 
the Maker of Conscience” in the American Journal of Sociology for 
March, 1902 (Vol. 7, pp. 611f). Compare also his book, The Social 
Task of Christianity. The conception of the work of the church as 
the creation of public conscience is, of course, closely allied to the 
conception that the work of the church is chiefly prophetic. How¬ 
ever, the former expression is to be preferred as less ambiguous and 
more in line with the terminology of the social sciences. 

2 From this point on the substance of this chapter was presented 
in a paper before The Religious Education Association at its Pitts¬ 
burgh meeting in March, 1920. See Religious Education for April, 
1920. 


OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH 291 


tian society, we have seen, cannot be realized by merely 
developing Christian character in individuals. That has 
been a mistaken idea of the Protestant church. “No 
individual,” says one of the profounder social thinkers of 
the present, 1 “can change the disorder and iniquity of 
this world. No chaotic mass of men and women can do 
it.” Such change can come only through public opinion, 
organized popular will, and social control. The transition 
from non-Christian society, then, to Christian society can 
only he effected hy the formation and guidance of an 
effective public opinion which shall express itself in an 
appropriate mode of social control, because that is the 
only mechanism through which conscious social changes 
are effected in human society. Individual education, in¬ 
dividual conversion, individual repentance, and the whole 
development of individual Christian character are, of 
course, necessary foundations; but if the church desires 
a Christian world, it must have a vision of its work be¬ 
yond these fundamentals. It must see that its higher 
work is the creation of public conscience—that is, an 
effective public opinion—regarding the conditions under 
which men and groups of men live together. It is only 
thus that a Christian world can come into being. 

There can be no doubt about the power of public opinion 
to make a Christian society, and ultimately a Christian 
world; the only doubt is, as to whether the Christian 
church will use its opportunities to make, guide, and con¬ 
trol public opinion. Probably no one would claim that 
there has been much organized effort on the part of Prot¬ 
estant churches in the United States in the past to guide 
and control public opinion, 2 unless it be along a few lines, 

1 Miss Mary P. Follett, The New State, p. 101. 

a See the “Social Creed of the Churches” in the Appendix, adopted 
by the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, represent- 



292 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


like the suppression of the liquor traffic. Yet this is 
exactly what all Christian churches must undertake if 
there is ever to be a Christian world. They must go into 
the business of creating an effective public conscience re¬ 
garding all relations of individuals, classes, nations, and 
races . The cry of the world is for Christian churches to 
go into this business at once. If the world is to be saved 
for Christianity, the churches must soon become more 
effectively organized for the guidance and control of pub¬ 
lic opinion. Only thus can a Christian environment be 
created for the nurture of Christian character. 

For there can be no doubt that in civilized societies 
public opinion is the chief power which lies back of in¬ 
stitutions, laws, and the “mores” or customs, since these 
things, sociology shows, are social habits which have been 
reflected upon and sanctioned by group opinion as neces¬ 
sary for group welfare. 1 In democratic societies, espe¬ 
cially, public opinion plays an increasing role; for de¬ 
mocracy, we have seen, is essentially the rule of public 
opinion. The social life of the future, which will un¬ 
doubtedly be democratic, is destined to be more and more 
dominated by public opinion. We live in a world which 
is more and more ruled by public opinion. If we want 
a Christian society, therefore, the church must capture 
public opinion for the Christian program. 

Let us see clearly the reasons why this is so. Public 

ing thirty Protestant denominations. However, after careful inves¬ 
tigation the author has been convinced that not one member of these 
churches out of a hundred knows of the existence of such a creed 
or can give any idea of its content. The churches thus far have 
failed to promulgate it through their pulpits and Sunday Schools. 

1 Perhaps the best discussion of public opinion from the standpoint 
of sociology is to be found in Cooley’s Social Organization, especially 
Chapter XII. See also Giddings’ Principles of Sociology, p. 139 f., 
and the author’s Introduction to Social Psychology, p. 155f. 


OPPORTUNITY OP THE CHURCH 293 

opinion, we have said, is the chief force in civilized so¬ 
ciety which lies back of almost all laws and institutions; 1 
hut laws and institutions mould very largely the character 
of individuals. This is particularly true if we include in 
institutions the “mores,” that is, the moral standards of 
the people. According to practically all sociologists the 
mores are the immediate determiners of the conduct of 
masses of men. It is absurd to think that we can have a 
Christian society so long as we have pagan mores, as we 
have seen we largely have in Western civilization. 2 3 The 
problem of creating Christian society is, then, essentially 
the problem of developing Christian mores. But the 
mores are the products of past public opinion; they can 
be remade and reshaped by the public opinion of the 
future, just as they were made by the public opinion of 
the past. There is no fatality nor finality about the 
mores, though people are prone to acquiesce in them as if 
there were. 

Our civilization still halts between the ideal of a society 
based upon force and the ideal of a society based upon 
good will or Christian love. The mores of barbarism still 
so largely survive among us, we have seen,—in our in¬ 
dustry, in our politics, in our personal relations—that it 
is with difficulty that men accept, hold to, and live out 
the Christian ideal of life. Such mores, we have seen, 
are the chief source of evil and maladjustment in our 

1 That is, in a creative way, from the standpoint of control over 
change. Professor Mecklin distinguishes sharply (Introduction to 
Social Ethics , Chapter IX) between public opinion and social or 
public conscience. Such distinction is, of course, justifiable; but it 
should not be overlooked that public opinion is the dynamic element 
in changing the social conscience. Effective public opinion creates 

social conscience; and if its formation can be safeguarded in the 
ways which we point out, its intelligence will be assured, 

3 See Chapter IV, 


294 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

present society, and they threaten to carry us back again 
completely to that pagan barbarism from which most of 
the nations of the world are but just emerging. They are 
the chief enemy of the church and Christianity . If we 
want a Christian world, we must have in the place of the 
mores of barbarism Christian mores, Christian institu¬ 
tions, Christian civilization, a Christian social environ¬ 
ment in brief, in which the Christian life will come as 
easily and naturally to individuals as national loyalty and 
patriotism do now. But to make this Christian social 
environment, the Church must control the power which 
lies back of institutions and their changes, and that power 
is public opinion. 

But let us now consider the nature of public opinion, 
for there are many misconceptions prevalent, and then 
let us see in detail how the church might undertake to 
form public opinion democratically and effectively upon 
all social problems. Public opinion does not imply abso¬ 
lute uniformity of opinion on the part of the members 
of a group, as is so often assumed. In large complex 
populations that would be impossible. There must be, of 
course, a certain core of agreement among the individuals 
of a group or at least among a majority, but no absolute 
uniformity of judgment is necessary. Public opinion is 
rather an organization, a co-ordination, of many separate 
individual judgments which all have a definite trend or 
direction. Thus a collective judgment is reached which 
we call “public opinion.” To illustrate: no absolute uni¬ 
formity of opinion regarding the evils of alcoholic bev¬ 
erages or regarding details of anti-liquor legislation has 
existed in the United States. There has been general 
agreement, however, as to the evils of the liquor traffic 
and of intemperance; and around this core of agreement 


OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH 295 

it was possible to crystallize opinion in favor of the 
eighteenth amendment and, we hope, of its enforcement 
Of course, no absolute uniformity of opinion regarding 
social matters can be expected to exist among members of 
the many branches of the Christian church. It should be 
possible, however, to find a core of agreement, in that all, 
or at least a majority, of church members may be pre¬ 
sumed to want a Christian society, a society based upon 
good will and mutual service. Around this core of agree¬ 
ment, it should be possible to crystallize a public opinion 
in favor of definite Christian customs and institutions. 
These illustrations show that the formation and effective 
functioning of a Christian public opinion, while it would 
require unity in essentials, would leave liberty among 
Christians in non-essentials. This truth needs emphasis 
in view of the many divisions which exist in the Christan 
church. 

From this it follows that the rule of public opinion is 
not necessarily the rule of the lowest mind or even of 
the average mind in the group which forms the opinion. 
On the contrary, if public opinion means no absolute uni¬ 
formity of individual judgment, but rather the co-ordina¬ 
tion of opinions in a definite direction, it may well repre¬ 
sent the mature judgment of leaders and specialists who 
are in close touch with the public. Neither the church 
nor the world needs to fear the rule of public opinion if 
it is properly formed. The actual level which public 
opinion reaches will depend upon a variety of circum¬ 
stances which we shall proceed to consider; but it is evi¬ 
dent that it need not represent the level of the lowest mind 
in the group nor even of the mediocre mind. 

But before we proceed we must warn against confus¬ 
ing public opinion with public sentiment and popular 


296 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


emotion. Much injury has been done to democracy by 
confusing the rule of public opinion with the rule of pub¬ 
lic sentiment or popular emotion. Public opinion is a 
more or less rational collective judgment formed by the 
action and reaction of many individual judgments. It 
differs radically, therefore, from popular emotion, which 
depends for its formation upon the contagion of feeling, 
and from public sentiment, which is usually the mass of 
feelings associated with the well-established habits of a 
group. Rather, public opinion is concerned with social 
changes, with making new social adjustments. Its strength 
and durability consists in its degree of rationality and in 
the fact that it is formed through deliberate and open 
discussion. Public sentiment and popular emotion may 
exist without public discussion, but not true public 
opinion. Public sentiment is usually conservative, popu¬ 
lar emotion frequently destructive and reactionary; while 
public opinion, because it is formed by rational discus¬ 
sion, is constructive and creative. The evangelism of 
the church, therefore, to create a Christian world should 
beware of stirring up popular emotion, and should con¬ 
fine itself to the creation of true public opinion in sup¬ 
port of the Christian program. Emotion should be ap¬ 
pealed to, if at all, only after a rational public opinion 
has been created; for the work of emotion should be to 
intensify, but not to guide, action. 

What then are the principles which should guide the 
church in its work of forming public opinion demo¬ 
cratically and effectively? First of all, rational, effective 
public opinion must be formed under conditions of free¬ 
dom. It is only free and open public discussion which is 
competent to form true public opinion, we have seen; 
otherwise the product will be the opinion of some minor 


OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH 297 

group or some special interest. Moreover, in proportion 
as public opinion is formed under conditions of freedom, 
in that proportion will public opinion reach the highest 
degree of rationality; for only under conditions of free¬ 
dom can all the facts be brought to light, ideas compared, 
and judgments tested. Truth under such conditions will 
have the best chance to prevail, and public opinion will 
be powerful, because there will be general confidence in 
its rationality. The church should lead in such public 
discussion in all questions where moral issues are involved. 
The church has every interest, therefore, in maintaining 
free speech, and a free press—within the limits, of course, 
of courtesy, decency and truth. 

The second principle which should guide the church in 
its efforts to form effective public opinion is that public 
opinion must be formed under conditions of obvious dis¬ 
interestedness. If the work of the church for a Christian 
social order is to be effective it must be disinterested; 
that is, it should have in it no selfish motive. The church’s 
sole interest should be in the good of humanity. The 
propaganda of revolutionary radicals, even though it is 
lacking in intelligence, often succeeds because of its dis¬ 
interestedness. The temperance movement succeeded best 
when it learned to avoid partisanship and exaggeration, 
and to work simply for social welfare. These illustrations 
clearly show that if the church wants dominion over the 
moral opinion of mankind, she must forget self-interest 
absolutely, and seek only the redemption of humanity. All 
denominational differences must be forgotten in devotion 
to this common unselfish end. Once the propaganda of 
the church did practically rule Western civilization; but 
as the church used its great influence for selfish and nar¬ 
row ends, stifling thought and repressing social, political, 


298 THE EEC OBSTRUCT ION OF RELIGION 


and religious progress, it lost its influence. Even yet 
men look back with horror upon the period of the church’s 
dominance in the past and with misgiving upon the 
church’s influence in the present. But if the church, in 
its efforts to guide and control public opinion, will keep 
public discussion free and open, if moreover it will be 
disinterested in its leadership, and if finally it be intel¬ 
ligent, there will be no need to fear the leadership of the 
church. 

The third quality needed by the church, then, if it is 
to guide public opinion democratically and effectively, 
is intelligence. Only as public opinion is formed with 
proper appreciation of expert knowledge and of intelligent 
leadership, can it develop the highest degree of rationality 
and power. The temperance movement, for example, de¬ 
veloped its full power only when it allied itself with 
science, when it sought and diffused the fullest scientific 
knowledge regarding the effects of alcohol. 

This means that if the church is to form public opinion 
effectively regarding social conditions, it must have a 
fuller appreciation of social science. Social intelligence 
is indispensable for the success of Christian ideals, and 
therefore the social sciences are the natural allies of the 
church in its work of building a Christian society. They 
will furnish more material for the effective guidance of 
public opinion in a Christian direction than even the 
Bible itself. If the ministry of the church is to under¬ 
take the function of social leadership, it should be trained 
even more in sociology than in theology. 1 “The minister,” 

1 Says Bishop F. J. McConnell (Journal of Religion , Vol. I, p. 
194) : “The theological schools more than any other agencies have 
the responsibility for the change of emphasis which we need. How 
many of us who left the theological school a quarter of a century 
ago had any hard training in the social sciences?” He concludes 
that theological faculties need experts on social reconstruction. 


OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH 299 


says Professor Coe, “must be a critic of social organiza¬ 
tion and process, and particularly of the human product. 
... To what extent does this social order aim to produce 
and succeed in producing the best sort of men and 
women V’ 1 The Christian movement will develop its full 
power only when it allies itself with social science and 
when it seeks and diffuses the fullest scientific knowledge 
of social conditions. It is regrettable, therefore, that the 
church as a whole has as yet so little faith in the social 
sciences; for scientific social knowledge could help it, 
more than wealth or temporal power, to make this world 
Christian. The church needs conversion to modern science 
almost as much as the world needs conversion to Chris¬ 
tianity. 

To be sure, there is much so-called science to-day, even 
among social scientists, which lacks common sense, is 
materialistic, and even anti-Christian; but so far as this 
is not merely incidental to the undeveloped condition of 
the social sciences, it is largely due to the lack of interest 
of the churches in these sciences. The temperance move¬ 
ment, we have seen, will win out through its alliance with 
science. So it will be with practically every phase of the 
Christian movement if it seeks alliance and guidance 
from science. If the church is to create public opinion 
upon social problems its first duty is to be intelligent; and 
it cannot be intelligent without adequate scientific knowl¬ 
edge of the facts and principles of human living together. 
The church has vital need of the social sciences. It needs 
more knowledge of the facts and forces which make or mar 
the lives of men; and there can be no doubt that these 
facts and forces are mainly social. On the other hand, 
the social sciences, though they exist to make a better 
human world, lag behind in their development because the 

1 Journal of Religion , January, 1921, p. 27. 


300 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

church demands so little from them and gives them so 
little support. The social sciences need the help of the 
church; and the church needs the help of the social 
sciences. There should be an alliance, therefore, between 
these two. A practical step in this direction would be the 
establishment of chairs of sociology, politics, and eco¬ 
nomics in all schools of religion and in all Christian col¬ 
leges. Then the church might become socially intelligent 
and marshal its hosts effectively for the redemption of 
the world. 

What methods, then, may the church legitimately em¬ 
ploy to form and guide public opinion? This question 
we have already answered by implication, but a few con¬ 
crete measures may be specified. First of all, there is 
oral discussion. Church members should realize that one 
of the first duties of the Christian life is to create public 
opinion and public conscience on social matters. This 
they can do by discussing these matters with friends and 
neighbors in the light of Christian principles. Habits 
and opportunities favoring oral discussion are falling into 
disuse, however, in modern society. The church might 
overcome this tendency to a certain extent by organizing 
“discussion groups” and “open forums” for the discussion 
of social matters. Sermonizing by ministers on social 
questions, no matter how excellent, is by itself inadequate, 
if there is not discussion of these sermons by the church 
members; for effective public opinion is always the 
co-operative product of the interaction of many individual 
minds. 

A second agency, which the church should employ to 
form and guide public opinion is the press, which in our 
civilization has become the chief factor in the making of 

O 


OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH 301 

public opinion. Here indirect action will probably be 
most effective. If those church members connected with 
the press as managers or editors did their full duty in 
creating Christian public opinion, our civilization would 
soon become Christian. They are not wholly to blame, 
however, for failing to carry Christianity into their busi¬ 
ness; for the church thus far has failed to insist that a 
supreme duty of its lay members is to create public con¬ 
science regarding social matters. The church should in¬ 
sist, therefore, that editors and managers of the press 
have in their business the greatest opportunity for Chris¬ 
tian service and therefore the utmost responsibility. 

Direct methods of working through the press to reach 
public opinion should, of course, also be employed by the 
church. The most powerful agency is undoubtedly the 
daily and weekly secular newspapers; but the religious 
periodical might be made scarcely second in importance. 
Telling articles along every line of the work of the church 
and of social conditions might bring Christian responsi¬ 
bility home to church members in ways which would be 
effective for the creation of Christian public opinion and 
public conscience. 

The church, too, should not neglect to advertise prop¬ 
erly its activities and movements. Psychologically, the 
whole matter of controlling and guiding public opinion 
may be said to be a matter of effective advertising. The 
most righteous program of the ages cannot succeed, we 
should remember, unless in some way it can be made to 
secure the serious and thoughtful attention of the mass 
of men. Sensational methods, of course, discredit them¬ 
selves and bring reproach upon the Christian cause; but 
the church has been too timid in employing proper 
methods to champion the Christian program and to bring 
it to the attention of the public. 


302 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 

We come again to the teaching work of the church as 
the thing which is fundamental both in the creation of 
individual Christian character and in the creation of 
Christian public opinion. The education of the young, 
as we have seen, must be peculiarly the method of the 
church. In the long run, the education of the young is 
also the most effective method of controlling public 
opinion. The overwhelming American opinion against 
the liquor traffic was undoubtedly largely the result of 
introducing temperance instruction into the public schools. 
The church should use its influence to get adequate in¬ 
struction on all social matters introduced into our public 
schools. It should insist that public education is for the 
sake of creating good citizens. If it cannot yet succeed 
in getting instruction in the public schools on social mat¬ 
ters directly connected with the consideration of Chris¬ 
tian principles, it can at least do so in its own schools 
and study classes. In the church’s Sunday school espe¬ 
cially there should be instruction given regarding social 
matters in direct and vital connection with Christian 
principles; but the average Sunday school will have to be 
remodelled before this can be done effectively. Says one 
of the leaders of religious education in the United States: 1 
“We find that the prevailing method of religious educa¬ 
tion in America cannot claim the name of system. It has 
no intelligent curriculum. It uses much unsuitable mate¬ 
rial, while it neglects a mine of wealth. It neglects the 
present condition of the world, the religious movements 
of our day, and the duties of the hour. It neglects the 
revelation of God in the Universe as disclosed by modern 
science. It neglects what social science has discovered in 
the ways of doing good to men. It imparts no sane 
method of ascertaining truth and deciding duty. The 

1 Dr. W. G v . Ballantine. 


OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH 303 

only method it uses is a capricious exegesis of ancient 
texts. ” 

While many of the best Sunday schools in our cities 
have gotten to a much higher plane, it is still true that the 
average Sunday school too often teaches the Bible or 
Christian principles abstractly with little or nothing said 
about the concrete social situations in our civilization. 
This is probably the reason why the religion of so many 
church members fails to function when they come into 
practical contact with the labor problem, the negro prob¬ 
lem, the divorce problem or some other concrete social 
situation. Something more than the Bible and Christian 
principles should be taught in our Sunday schools; and 
that is knowledge of actual social conditions in compari¬ 
son with Christian ideals. There is no good reason why 
good books on social and economic problems, written with 
a Christian background, should not be used in our Sun¬ 
day schools along with the Bible. 1 A text book in 
sociology, with a Christian viewpoint, is no more out of 
place in a Sunday school room than a book in Christian 
theology. The advanced classes should, indeed, be study¬ 
ing such books in connection with a study of the Gospels. 
The vital study of Christian ideals in relation to real life 
could do more to Christianize public opinion than probably 
any other means. If the Sunday school was thus vitalized 
through study of the concrete problems of Christian liv¬ 
ing, there would probably be no lack of interest in it on 
the part of either children or adults. 

1 Says Professor Coe (A Social Theory of Religious Education, p. 
315) : “The spirit of Jesus is so forward looking, so creative, so 
inexhaustible, that the Bible cannot possibly be a sufficient text-book 
of Christian Living. To tie religious education down to it, as 
dogmatism desires to do, would make us like those who are ever 
learning, but never able to come to the truth—ever learning to love, 
but ever permitting the social order to defeat love.” 


304 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


To sum up; if the church is to create a Christian world, 
it must control in larger measure public opinion which 
is the ruling force of our time and the real sovereign of 
democracy. But to do this, the whole method and ma¬ 
chinery of the Christian church must be modernized. The 
church must make a larger use of scientific sociological 
and psychological knowledge of every sort. The church 
must be profoundly interested in promoting and diffusing 
social knowledge. The world is perishing for lack of 
knowledge of the way in which human beings should live 
together. The church holds one key to this knowledge, the 
social ideals of Jesus, and the social sciences the other. 
In the formation of an effective public opinion to create 
a Christian world, the church must use not only the key 
of Christian ideals, but also the key of scientific social 
knowledge. 

Thus the church might permeate institutions as well 
as individuals with the Christian spirit and create a 
Christian social environment, in which, as we have said, 
the Christian life would seem as “natural” as the life of 
greed and selfishness now seems. Thus the Christian 
spirit might permeate and gradually transform, in the 
ways we have already indicated, the family life, the po¬ 
litical life, the life of pleasure, and even the economic 
life. The radical program of social Christianity now 
stands revealed. That it is more utopian and revolu¬ 
tionary than the program of some revolutionists cannot 
be denied; for it seeks to base human society upon love 
and reason and would fearlessly follow these in building 
a new social order. That it is a program which will be 
unacceptable to those who wish to live a self-seeking life, 
to those who are unwilling to surrender self in service, 
also cannot be denied. How then is it practicable ? What 
motives are powerful enough to put such a program into 


OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH 305 


practice ? The new social Christianity, it is said, will not 
work, because it lacks strong motives. The old theological 
Christianity appealed to men’s fear and self-interest— 
the strongest, it is claimed, of human motives. If the 
new social Christianity is the religion of Jesus, then, it 
is said, it is a religion which will not work. 

The reply is, that self-seeking impulses are not the 
strongest human motives, even though they are most in 
evidence in our present social system. Self has never 
been able to inspire the devotion which unselfish ends have 
called forth. All the higher religions, and not simply 
Christianity, attest that devotion to an ideal is potentially 
the strongest of human motives. In social Christianity 
this devotion naturally divides itself into devotion to its 
leader and devotion to the cause. “The heart of all re¬ 
ligion,” says a Japanese Buddhist, “is the faith that binds 
the soul to its Lord.” So in Christianity, belief in, love 
of, and loyalty to Jesus is the primary motive in the re¬ 
ligious life. That has been the foundation of all of its 
forms, and so must remain as long as the name itself 
endures. The church must continue to emphasize this 
motive. Personal leadership and personal loyalty are at 
the heart of every great movement in human society. But 
beyond this personal loyalty to Jesus, social Christianity 
sees the loyalty to the cause which he represents. The 
supreme motive in Jesus himself was the love of hu¬ 
manity —it was redeeming love —and this must also be 
the supreme motive of every genuine follower of his. 
This love of humanity must be the moving impulse of any 
religion which seeks the redemption of the world. It is 
clearly the impulse of Jesus himself. The church must 
throw its supreme emphasis, then, upon the love of, and 
the loyalty to, the Great Community—humanity. This 


306 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION 


means loyalty to all truth, to all right, to all betterment, 
and so to God himself. This is the motive to which the 
church must make appeal in its work of creating a public 
conscience which shall make possible a Christian world. 
It is no impracticable motive. It is the motive which has 
inspired the greatest and best of our race, from Jesus 
down to the present; it is the motive of every great move¬ 
ment to which we can give our whole-hearted assent. It 
is this motive, which is growing ever larger and more 
powerful with the passing years, upon which social re¬ 
ligion would build its idealistic faith. The Christian 
church undertakes no impossible task. It summons men 
to devotion to no impracticable ideal. A Christian world 
is not only practicable; in the long run it will be found 
that no other sort is practicable. 


APPENDIX 


307 


APPENDIX I 

THE SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCHES 

APPENDIX II 

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS 

APPENDIX III 

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 













APPENDIX I 


“the social creed of the churches” 

The following statement was adopted by the Federal 
Council of Churches of Christ in America in 1908, and 
has since been adopted by the leading Protestant denomi¬ 
nations, the Y. M. C. A., and the Y. W. C. A. 

This creed reads as follows: 

(1) Equal rights and justice for all men and in all 
stations of life. 

(2) Protection of the family by the single standard 
of purity, uniform divorce laws, proper regula¬ 
tion of marriage, proper housing. 

(3) The fullest possible development of every child, 
especially by the provision of education and 
recreation. 

(4) Abolition of child labor. 

(5) Such regulation of the conditions of toil for 
women as shall safeguard the physical and moral 
health of the community. 

(6) Abatement and prevention of poverty. 

(7) Protection of the individual and society from the 
social, economic, and moral waste of the liquor 
traffic. 

(8) Conservation of health. 

(9) Protection of the worker from dangerous ma¬ 
chinery, occupational diseases and mortality. 

(10) The right of all men to the opportunity for self¬ 
maintenance, for safeguarding this right against 
encroachments of every kind, for the protection 

309 


310 


APPENDIX 


of workers from the hardships of enforced un¬ 
employment. 

(11) The right of employees and employers alike to 
organize, and for adequate means of conciliation 
and arbitration in industrial disputes. 

(12) Suitable provision for the old age of the workers, 
and for those incapacitated by injury. 

(13) Release from employment one day in seven. 

(14) Gradual and reasonable reduction of heurs of 
labor to the lowest practicable point, and for that 
degree of leisure for all which is a condition of 
the highest human life. 

(15) A living wage as the minimum in every industry, 
and for the highest wage that each industry can 
afford. 

(16) A new emphasis upon the application of Christian 
principles to the acquisition and use of property, 
and for the most equitable division of the product 
of industry that can ultimately be devised. 

At the meeting of the Federal Council in 1919 the fol¬ 
lowing four amendments were added to the above “creed.” 

Facing the social issues involved in reconstruction: 

RESOLVED: That we affirm as Christian Churches, 
(1) That the teachings of Jesus are those of es¬ 
sential democracy and express themselves through 
brotherhood and the co-operation of all groups. 
We deplore class struggle, and declare against all 
class dominion, whether of capital or labor. Sym¬ 
pathizing with labor’s desire for a better day and 
an equitable share in the profits and management 
of industry, we stand for orderly and progressive 
social reconstruction instead of revolution by 
violence. 


APPENDIX 


311 


(2) That an ordered and constructive democracy in 
industry is as necessary as political democracy, 
and that collective bargaining and the sharing of 
shop control and management are inevitable steps 
in its attainment. 

(3) That the first charge upon industry should be that 
of a wage sufficient to support an American 
standard of living. To that end we advocate the 
guarantee of a minimum wage, the control of un¬ 
employment through government labor exchanges, 
public works, land settlement, social insurance 
and experimentation in profit sharing and co¬ 
operative ownership. 

(4) We recognize that women played no small part 
in the winning of the war. We believe that they 
should have full political and economic equality 
with equal pay for equal work, and a maximum 
eight-hour day. We declare for the abolition of 
night work by women, and the abolition of child 
labor; and for the provision of adequate safe¬ 
guards to insure the moral as well as the physical 
health of the mothers and children of the race. 

At the meeting of the Federal Council in Chicago, De¬ 
cember 16, 1921, the following declaration of Interna¬ 
tional Ideals was adopted: 

(1) We believe that nations no less than individuals 
are subject to God’s immutable moral laws. 

(2) We believe that nations achieve true welfare, 
greatness, and honor only through just dealing 
and unselfish service. 

(3) We believe that nations that regard themselves as 
Christian have special international obligations. 

(4) We believe that the spirit of Christian brother- 


312 


APPENDIX 


l’iness can remove every unjust barrier of trade, 
color, creed, and race. 

(5) We believe that Christian patriotism demands the 
practice of good will between nations. 

(6) We believe that international policies should se¬ 
cure equal justice for all races. 

(7) We believe that all nations should associate them¬ 
selves permanently for world peace and good will. 

(8) We believe in international law, and in the uni¬ 
versal use of international courts of justice and 
boards of arbitration. 

(9) We believe in a sweeping reduction of armaments 
by all nations. 

(10) We believe in a warless world, and dedicate our¬ 
selves to its achievement. 

Essentially similar statements have been promulgated 
by the Administrative Committee of the National Catholic 
War Council in America and by the Central Conference 
of American Rabbis. A critical summary of the various 
social programs of different religious bodies will be found 
in Ward, The New Social Order, Chapter XI. 


APPENDIX II 


ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS 
CHAPTER I 

THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 

The religious crisis and the new reformation, pp. 1-3—A rational 
religion necessary, 3-5—Science equals rationalized knowledge, 6— 
Rational religion not intellectualistic religion, 7-10—Science and the 
religious revolution, 11-13—Spiritual confusion of the modern world, 
14—Opportunity for religious reconstruction and advance, 15—Evi¬ 
dences of religious and moral retrogression, 16, 17—The social signifi¬ 
cance of Nietzsche, 18, 19—Reversion toward pagan ideals, 19-22— 
The evolution of religion through religious revolutions, 23-25—The 
stage of ethical monotheism, 25, 26—The divorce of social practice 
from religion, 28, 29—Science and religion both rest on faith, 30— 
The age of rational faith ahead, 31. 

CHAPTER II 

THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION 

The social power of religion, 33—Religion and civilization, 34-36— 
The individual function of religion, 37-38—Religion distinguished 
from theology and the church, 39—Function of religion in univer¬ 
salizing the will and the emotions, 40, 41—As an agency of social 
control, 42, 43—As means of consecrating individual life, 44—As 
belief in the reality of spiritual life, 45, 46—The definition of religion, 
47—The stages of religious evolution, 48—Preanimism or manaism, 
49—Animism, 50—Totemism, 51—Ancestor worship, 52—Polytheism, 
53—Henotheism, 53—Monotheism, 54—Religion and social order, 
55-58—Religion and social values, 59-60—Religion and “pattern 
ideas,” 61, 62—Science as a substitute for religion, 62, 63—Danger 

313 


314 


APPENDIX 


of irrational and unethical religion, 64—Explanation of the conserva¬ 
tism of religion, 65—Social progress and religion, 66—Humanitarian 
ethics and‘religion, 67—Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Judaism, and 
Christianity from the humanitarian viewpoint, 68, 69. 

CHAPTER III 

THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

Christianity an integral part of human social evolution, 70—The 
stages of human culture, 71-73—The method of cultural evolution 
and religious changes, 74, 75—Christianity a new type of culture, 
77—Distinctive social trait of Christianity, 76-79—Why Christianity 
sprang from Judaism, 80, 81—Influence of the personality of Jesus, 82 
—Social character of Christianity, 83, 84—Why historical Christianity 
has often failed, 85-88—Growth of institutions through failure, 89— 
Sociological judgment of Christianity, 90-92. 

CHAPTER IV 

OUR SEMI-PAGAN CIVILIZATION 

Pagan tendencies in our civilization, 93-95—What do we mean 
by paganism? 96, 97—So-called Christian civilization a mixed affair, 
98-100—Pagan ideals in our civilization, 100-103—Pagan tendencies 
in our politics, 104—in our business, 105—in the labor movement, 
106, 107—in literature, art, and philosophy, 108-110—in our science, 
111, 112—in the church, 113—Pagan ideals of the nineteenth 
century, 114-116—Civilization cannot remain half-pagan and half- 
Christian, 117-118. 


CHAPTER V 

POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

Definition of positive religion, 119—Comte’s “Religion of Hu¬ 
manity,” 120—Tendency of religion in the United States to become 
positive, 121-123—Positive religion not agnostic or subjective, 124— 
Religious values necessarily personal and social, 125-126—Positive 
Christianity will subordinate theological and metaphysical questions, 


APPENDIX 


315 


127—Positive Christianity will be concretely ethical, 128—collective 
rather than individualistic, 129—active rather than contemplative, 
130—constructive and co-operative, 131—Impossibility of religious 
subjectivism, 132-133—The place of the universe in the religious 
consciousness, 134-136—The place of humanity in the religious con¬ 
sciousness, 137—Necessity of belief in God, 138-140—in immortality, 
140-142—Positive conception of sin and salvation, 143, 144—The 
historical credibility of the gospels, 145, 146—Critical experience 
substantiates Jesus’ claims for himself, 147-150—Jesus the sufficient 
leader and social savior of mankind, 151, 152—The place of the Bible 
in rational religion, 153—The place of prayer in rational religion, 
154-156—Positive Christianity will be tolerant, 157, 158—Positive 
Christianity’s solution of the religious problem, 159, 160. 

CHAPTER VI 

THE ESSENTIALS OF A SOCIAL RELIGION 

Essential principles of a positive social religion, 161, 162—Human 
beings through co-operation create social values, 163—Spiritual 
service the end of social religion, 164-166—Service of the weak 
emphasized by social religion, 167—Service must be motivated by 
love, 168-170—Supreme need of good will in human relations, 170- 
172—Conditions necessary for peace in human relations, 173—Love 
or good will an absolute social principle, 174—Sacrificial love the 
means of the world’s redemption, 176-178—Inadequacy of justice as 
a social principle, 178—Inadequacy of self-interest as a social prin¬ 
ciple, 179, 180—Social religion the great means to social morale, 181 
—These principles identical with those which Jesus taught, 182— 
Jesus taught a concrete ideal, the kingdom of God, 183 Meaning 
of the phrase “the kingdom of God,” 184, 185—A Christian social 
order must be world-wide, 186. 

CHAPTER VII 

RELIGION AND FAMILY LIFE 

Cooley’s doctrine of the importance of “primary groups,” 188, 
lg 9 —Social religion supremely interested in the family, 190-193— 
Normal family life decaying, 194—Material conditions and family 


316 


APPENDIX 


life, 195-197—Sex and family life, 198, 199—Eugenics and social 
religion, 200-202—Social religion makes the child the center of 
gravity in marriage and the family life, 203-207—Christian ideal of 
the family in accord with social science, 207-209. 

CHAPTER VIII 

RELIGION AND ECONOMIC LIFE 

Importance of the economic element, 210—Christian social order 
impossible with pagan economic system, 211—Paganism of our pres¬ 
ent economic system, 212-214—Distribution of wealth and income 
in the United States, 214-215—Conditions of labor in the United 
States, 215, 216—External changes not sufficient to remedy these 
conditions, 217, 218—Limitations imposed by science upon social 
religion, 219—Impossibility of communism, 219, 220—Impossibility 
of abolishing social classes, 221, 222—Economic problem one of pro¬ 
duction as well as of distribution, 223—Necessity of leaving a 
measure of individual liberty, 224—A Christian social order possible, 
225, 226—Service of humanity should be the end of the economio 
life, 227, 228—Saving a service to society, 229—The spirit of co¬ 
operation in industry, 230—Development of industrial co-operation, 
231, 232—Equalizing of economic opportunity, 233-235—Abolition of 
poverty through taxation of unearned wealth, 236-239—Legitimate 
uses of wealth, 239, 240—Principles laid down by Jesus identical with 
the above, 241, 242. 

CHAPTER IX 

RELIGION AND POLITICAL LIFE 

Importance of political organization, 243—Divorcement of politi¬ 
cal life from religion, 244, 245—Politics should recognize the service 
of humanity as its end, 246—Democracy the form of political organi¬ 
zation consistent with this end, 247, 248—Maladjustment between 
religion and democracy, 249—Identity of ideals of democracy and 
Christianity, 250—Dependence of democracy upon social religion, 
251—Meaning and dangers of democracy, 252-254—Selfish individual¬ 
ism a foe of democracy, 255—Group selfishness a foe of democracy, 
256-258—Social democracy necessary for political democracy, 258, 
259—Militarism as the foe of democracy, 259-261—The religion of 
Jesus essentially democratic, 262, 263. 


APPENDIX 


317 


CHAPTER X 

RELIGION AND SOCIAL PLEASURE 

Importance of play and amusement, 264, 265—Pagan standards 
in pleasures and amusements, 266, 267—This in part due to the 
lowering of our social morale, 268, 269—Scientific social religion will 
use scientifically determined standards for social pleasures, 270, 272— 
Rational social pleasures should be recreative, 272—unselfish, 273— 
educational, 274—spiritual, 275—The providing of recreation a public 
function, 276—Spirit of art should dominate social pleasure, 276— 
Solution of the problem of Sunday amusements, 277—These prin¬ 
ciples are those implicit in Jesus’ teachings, 278, 279, 

CHAPTER XI 

THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH 

Importance of organized religious life, 280—Importance of the 
church, 281, 282—Need of a united church, 283—Need of co-opera¬ 
tion of Protestants with Jews and Catholics, 284—Co-operation of 
Christians with non-Christians, 285—“Hospital” conception of the 
church inadequate, 286—Inadequacy of conception of church as an 
individualistic educational institution, 287-289—The work of the 
church the social redemption of mankind, 290—Highest work of the 
church the creation of public conscience, or effective public opinion, 
on moral issues, 291—Public opinion makes and remakes the “mores,” 
292—The “mores of barbarism” surviving among us the chief enemy 
of Christianity, 293—The nature of public opinion, 294, 295—Ra- 
tional public opinion must be formed under conditions of freedom, 
296—also under conditions of disinterestedness, 297—also intelli¬ 
gently, 298—The church should ally itself with the social sciences, 
299_Church should encourage public discussion, 300—Church should 
use the press to guide public opinion, 301—Religious education and 
the work of the Sunday school, 302, 303—Church should seek to 
permeate all institutions with the Christian spirit, 304—Self-seeking 
impulses not so powerful as the motive of Jesus—redeeming love, 
305, 306. 

Note: It is suggested that the above analysis of the book be 
used when the book is used for text-book purposes. The headings 
will readily suggest to the teacher questions and topics for further 
discussion. 











APPENDIX III 


A SELECTED LIST OF BOOKS IN ENGLISH SUGGESTED FOR 

COLLATERAL READING 

CHAPTER I 

ELLWOOD—The Social Problem, Chap. I 

ELLWOOD—Introduction to Social Psychology, Chaps. VII, VIII, 
FITCH—Can the Church Survive in the Changing Order? 

HAYES—Sociology and Ethics 
HOBHOUSE—The Rational Good, Chaps. I-III 
HUDSON—The Truths We Live By, Chap. I 
LEUBA—The Belief in God and Immortality 
SELLARS—The Next Step in Religion 
SHOTWELL—The Religious Revolution of Today 
SMITH—Social Idealism and the Changing Theology 

CHAPTER II 

AMES—Psychology of Religious Experience 
BARTON—The Religions of the World 
BOAS—The Mind of Primitive Man 
COE—The Psychology of Religion 
CAIRD—The Evolution of Religion 
CARPENTER—Pagan and Christian Creeds 
CONKLIN—The Direction of Human Evolution 
COOLEY—Social Organization 

DURKHEIM—The Elementary Forms of Religious Life 
ELLWOOD—The Social Problem, Chaps. V, VII 
ELLWOOD—Introduction to Social Psychology, Chaps. XI, XII 
GOLDENWEISER—Early Civilization 

HARRISON—Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek 
Religion 

HOBHOUSE—Morals in Evolution 
JAMES—Varieties of Religious Experience 

319 


320 


APPENDIX 


KIDD—Social Evolution 
LEUBA—A Psychological Study of Religion 
MARETT—The Threshold of Religion 
MARETT—Anthropology 

NOVICOW—Mechanism and Limits of Human Association 
PRATT—The Religious Consciousness 
SUMNER—Folkways, Chaps. I, II 
THOMAS—Source Book for Social Origins 

CHAPTER III 

CASE—The Evolution of Early Christianity 
ELLWOOD—The Social Problem, Chap. II 
GLOVER—The Jesus of History 

GLOVER—The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire 

KENT—Social Teachings of the Prophets and Jesus 

KENT—Work and Teachings of the Apostles 

KING—Ethics of Jesus 

MATHEWS—The Social Teaching of Jesus 

RAUSCHENBUSCH—The Social Principles of Jesus 

SEELEY—Ecce Homo 

SIMKHOVITCH—Toward the Understanding of Jesus 
SMITH—Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion 
THOMAS—Religion—Its Prophets and False Prophets 

CHAPTER IV 

BROWN—Is Christianity Practicable? 

EDDY—Facing the Crisis, Part II 

ELLWOOD—Sociology and Modern Social Problems, Chaps. 
VIII-XIV 

FERRERO—Ancient Rome and Modern America 
FIGGIS—Civilization at the Cross Roads 
IRWIN—The Next War 
HUDSON—The Truths We Live By, Chap. I 
KIDD—The Science of Power, Chaps. II, III 
MICKLEM and MORGAN—Christ and Caesar 
MASTERMAN—The Condition of England 
RAUSCHENBUSCH—Christianity and the Social Crisis 
ROSS—Sin and Society 

SANTAYANA—Character and Opinion in the United States 



APPENDIX 


321 


SANTAYANA—The Winds of Doctrine 
TAWNEY—The Acquisitive Society 
VEBLEN—The Theory of the Leisure Class 

CHAPTER V 

AMES—The New Orthodoxy 
BALFOUR—Theism and Humanism 
BOWNE—Theism 

CAIRD—The Social Philosophy of Comte 
CASE—The Millenial Hope 
COE—The Psychology of Religion 
CONKLIN—The Direction of Human Evolution 
ENELOW—A Jewish View of Jesus 
GLOVER—The Jesus of History 

HALL—Morale, the Supreme Standard of Life and Conduct 
HOBHOUSE—Development and Purpose 
HOBHOUSE—The Rational Good 

HOCKING—The Meaning of God in Human Experience 
LEVY-BRUHL—The Philosophy of Comte 
LYMAN—The Experience of God in Modern Life 
RAUSCHENBUSCH—A Theology for the Social Gospel 
SIMKHOVITCH—Toward the Understanding of Jesus 
SORLEY—Moral Values and the Idea of God 
THOMAS—Religion—Its Prophets and False Prophets 
THOMSON—The System of Animate Nature 

CHAPTER VI 

COOLEY—Social Organization 
ELLWOOD—The Social Problem, Chaps. V, VII 
FOSDICK—The Meaning of Service 
HOCKING—Human Nature and Its Remaking 
HOBHOUSE—The Rational Good 

HUTCHINS and ROCHESTER—Jesus Christ and the World 
Today 

KIDD—The Science of Power, Chaps. V-VII 
MATHEWS—The Gospel and the Modern Man 
MECKLIN—Introduction to Social Ethics 
PEABODY—Jesus Christ and the Social Question 
RAUSCHENBUSCH—Christianity and the Social Crisis 


322 


APPENDIX 


RAUSCHENBUSCH—Christianizing the Social Order 
STRONG—The New World Religion 
WARD—The New Social Order 

CHAPTER VII 

ADLER—Marriage and Divorce 
BOSANQUET—The Family 
COOLEY—Social Organization, Chaps. III-V 
ELLWOOD—Sociology and Modern Social Problems, Chaps. 
IV-VIII 

ELLWOOD—The Social Problem, Chap. Ill 
GEDDES AND THOMSON—Sex 
GILLETTE—The Family and Society 
MANGOLD—Problems of Child Welfare 
ROYDEN—Sex and Common Sense 
ROYDEN—Women at the World’s Cross-Roads 
SALEEBY—Parenthood and Race Culture 

CHAPTER VIII 

BARTLET, CARLYLE, and others—Property, Its Duties and 
Rights 

CARVER—Principles of Political Economy 

CARVER—Essays in Social Justice 

CAVERT—The Church and Industrial Reconstruction 

CLAY—Economics for the General Reader 

COMMONS—Industrial Government 

ELLWOOD—The Social Problem, Chap. IV 

ELY—Outlines of Economics 

FRIDAY—Profits, Wages, and Prices 

GORE (editor)—The Return of Christendom 

HOBHOUSE—Liberalism, Chap. VIII 

HOBSON—Work and Wealth 

KING—Wealth and Income in the United States 

LAIDLER—Socialism in Thought and Action 

RAUSCHENBUSCH—Christianizing the Social Order 

ROWNTREE—The Human Factor in Business 

RYAN—A Living Wage 

TAWNEY—The Aquisitive Society 

WARD—The New Social Order 


APPENDIX 

CHAPTER IX 

ADDAMS—Democracy and Social Ethics 

BRYCE—Modern Democracies 

COOLEY—Social Organization 

CROLY—Progressive Democracy 

ELLWOOD—The Social Problem, Chaps. V and VI 

FOLLETT—The New State 

FRIEDMAN (editor)—America and the New Era, Part II 

HOBHOUSE—Liberalism 

HOBHOUSE—Democracy and Reaction 

HOBHOUSE—Social Evolution and Political Theory 

LIPPMANN—Public Opinion 

MECKLIN—Introduction to Social Ethics 

PAGE—The Sword or the Cross 

ROBERTS—The Unfinished Programme of Democracy 
MICKLEM and MORGAN—Christ and Caesar 
SIMS—Ultimate Democracy and Its Making 
WALLAS—The Great Society 

CHAPTER X 

ADDAMS—The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets 

CURTIS—Education Through Play 

DAVIS—The Exploitation of Pleasure 

EDWARDS—Popular Movements 

LEE—Play in Education 

PATTEN—The New Basis of Civilization 

RAINWATER—The Play Movement in the United States 

ROSS—Principles of Sociology, Chap. LII 

CHAPTER XI 

BROWN—The Church in America 
COE—Social Theory of Religious Education 
COPE—The School in the Modern Church 
EARP—The Social Engineer 

ELLWOOD—Introduction to Social Psychology, Chap. VII 
FOLLETT—The New State 
FOSDICK—Christianity and Social Progress 
HOLMES—New Churches for Old 


323 


324 


APPENDIX 


JACKSON—A Community Church 
KIDD—The Science of Power, Chap. IV 
LIPPMANN—Public Opinion 
MECKLIN—Introduction to Social Ethics 
PARKS—The Crisis of the Churches 
ROSS—Social Psychology 

STRAYER—The Reconstruction of the Church 
ZUMBRUNNEN—The Community Church 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

HASTINGS—Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics 
MATHEWS and SMITH—A Dictionary of Religion and Ethics 



INDEX 




A 

Abnormal classes, help of, 167; 

marriage of, 200, 201. 
Abstraction, power of, 40, 50. 
Acquired character, 63, 189, 190, 
192, 266. 

Adams, Henry, cited, 73, 111. 
Adaptation, 8, 9, 37, 38, 41, 133, 
155; religion as an organ of, 
37, 38, 41, 55, 133, 155. 
Addams, Jane, cited, 267, 268, 

270. 

Adler, Felix, cited, 207. 
Advertising, church, 301. 
Agnosticism, 1, 22, 25, 31, 40, 
124, 125 127. 

Altruism, 9, 67, 106, 168-178, 181, 
190, 191, 199, 207. 

Ames, E. S., cited, 42, 57, 58, 60, 
160. 

American Indians, 49, 50. 
American religion, 13, 25, 115, 
121-124, 287. 

American social conditions, 21, 
22, 94, 102, 106, 112, 115, 194, 
214, 215, 287. 

Amusements, social, 102, 264- 
279. 

Ancestor worship, 24, 48, 52. 
Animatism, 49, note. 

Animism, 24, 45, 46, 48-51. 
Anthropology, x, xii, 34, 49, 61, 
70, 71, 76, 140, 145, 220, 259. 
Anthropomorphism, 52, 140. 
Applied social science, ix, xi, 161. 
Archaeology, 71, 80. 

Aristotle, cited, 97, 164. 

Art, 52, 98, 109, 117, 276, 277. 
Asceticism, 165, 198, 208, 270, 

271, 278, 279; definition of, 
270. 

Atheism, 7, 25, 46, 250. 


Attitudes, social, 40, 46, 161-186, 
189, 213, 226; negative, 46, 
111, 112, 124; religious, 26, 40, 
47, 120, 126, 154, 155, 211. 

Authority, external, 100, 101, 

251. 

B 

Bacon, B. W., cited, 88. 

Bahaism, 68. 

Ballantine, W. G., cited, 302. 

Barbarism, definition of, 71, 97; 
traditions of, in modern society, 
72, 73, 86, 97, 110, 293; re¬ 
crudescence of, 75, 95, 98, 100, 
101, 102, 116, 117, 193, 212, 
244, 266, 294. 

Bargy, Henry, cited, 121. 

Bartlet, J. V., cited, 221. 

Barton, G. A., cited, 47. 

Batten, S. Z., cited, 290. 

Behavior, human, 34, 37, 60, 149, 
182, 266, 293, 305. 

Beliefs, religious, 4, 11, 13, 14, 
16, 22, 34-69, 104, 130, 132. 

Bergson, H., 10. 

Bible, place of, in Christianity, 
xii, 152-154; proper use of, 88, 
153, 154; criticism of, 101, 154. 

Biological elements in human 
life, 111, 163, 198-203, 265. 

Bismarck, 103. 

Boas, F., cited, 49. 

Bowne, Borden P., cited, 133. 

Branford, Victor, cited, vii. 

Brightman, E. S., cited, 132. 

Brown, W. Adams, cited, 113. 

Buddhism, 1, 46, 68, 146, 150. 

Bury, J. B., cited, 36. 

Butler, Samuel, 108. 

Business, anti-Christian, 21, 102- 
107, 114. 


325 


326 


INDEX 


c 

Caird, Edward, cited, 47, 125. 

Capitalism, 105, 217, 227. 

Carpenter, Edward, cited, 13, 45, 
47, 71, 198, 262. 

Carver, T. N., cited, 162, 216, 
236. 

Case, S. J., cited, 70, 77, 82, 146 

Catholic church, 284, 285, 310. 

Channing, W. E., cited, 122. 

Character, individual, how 
formed, 104, 189, 190, 210, 243, 
264, 293; importance of, 253, 
287, 291. 

Charity, 28, 167. 

Chastity, 199, 203. 

Child, sociological significance of, 
204-206; and Christianity, 207, 
208. 

Chinese, 53. 

Christ, see Jesus. 

Christian democracy, 263. 

Christian ideals, see Ideals. 

Christian movtment, the, 70, 77, 
82, 83, 299. 

Christianity, definition, 1, 70; 
origin of, 70-82; social signifi¬ 
cance of, 70-92; social charac¬ 
ter of, 76-81, 84, 91, 137, 181- 
187; Greek element in, 80; re¬ 
lation to Judaism, 69, 77, 80, 
87; to Oriental religions, 80; 
humanitarian nature of, 76-92, 
183-187; historical, 39, 85-89, 
186; in Western civilization, 
83-89, 90, 93, 99, 108, 115, 118; 
positive, 119-160; essentials of, 
78-84, 181-187; and the family, 
194, 207-209; and industry, 
211-213, 241, 242; and politics, 
245, 262, 263; and amusements, 
267, 278, 279; revolutionary 
character of, 77, 79, 130, 304. 

Church, present condition of, ix, 
1, 2, 113, 282; opportunity of, 
280-306; union of, 283-285; 
membership, 159, 286; Pagan¬ 
ism in, 86, 92, 98, 114, 286; 
and religion of Jesus, 13, 85-88, 
98, 282, 286; social necessity 


of, 131, 280, 281; and public 
opinion, 290-304; and religious 
education, 287-289, 302, 303; 
social function of, 131, 280- 
290. 

Churches, Federal Council of, in 
America, 291, 307; social creed 
of, 211, 291, 307. 

Civilization, definition, 71, 72; 
nature of, 34, 61-63, 71-74, 
107; relation to religion, 34, 
54-64, 75; reversions in, 16, 
73, 95, 117; problem of our, 93, 
100; present condition, 93-118, 
193, 293; reconstruction of, 3, 
93, 291; Christian, 93, 117, 
118, 290-304. 

Class strife, 106, 107, 171-173, 
257, 258. 

Classes, social relations of, 106, 
171, 222; social necessity of, 
221 , 222 . 

Codrington, R. H., cited, 49. 

Coe, G. A., cited, xiii, 10, 114, 
152, 155, 161, 287, 298, 303. 

Coit, S., cited, viii. 

Communal character of religion, 
36, 43, 47, 280. 

Communism, 219,. 220, 225-227. 

Community life, 129, 161, 167, 

169, 171, 182, 189, 274, 305. 

Comparative religion, 48. 

Comte, Auguste, cited, 20, 29, 44, 
63, 119, 120, 121, 122, 125, 

132, 140, 141, 158, 171. 

Conflict, necessity of minimizing, 
91, 117, 171, 216, 246, 256, 

258; between classes, 16, 67, 
106, 171, 213, 216, 230, 246, 

256-258; between nations, 16, 
103, 172, 246, 259-261; between 
races, 16, 67, 172, 259; between 
Christianity and paganism, 18, 
75, 76, 79, 86, 98-101, 117, 118. 

Conflicting ideals of our civiliza¬ 
tion, viii, 11-16, 75, 98-118; 
293. 

Confusion of the present, 11-17, 
99, 100. 

Conklin, E. G., cited, 2, 24, 46, 
60, 100, 134, 159. 


INDEX 


327 


Consciousness, religious, 48-55, 
125, 126, 132, 133, 137. 

Consciousness of kind, 72, 76, 
169. 

Consecration, in religion, 44, 47, 
117, 159, 166, 203, 286. 

Conservation of social values, 24, 
38, 60, 65, 114, 193. 

Conservative tendencies of re¬ 
ligion, 52, 55-65. 

Consumption of wealth, 239, 240. 

Control, social, religion as a 
means of, 12, 42, 47, 50, 52, 55, 
56-63, 87, 101, 203, 268, 270, 
291; need of more, 29, 43, 64, 

291, 292. 

Conversion, religious, 289. 

Cooley, C. H., cited, 44, 81, 169, 
188, 191, 192, 250, 262, 266, 

292. 

Co-operation, maximization of, 91, 
163-169, 171, 173, 231, 232; be¬ 
tween classes, 167, 222, 225, 
230-235; among churches, 121, 
131, 283-285. 

Creative evolution, 136, 138. 

Crime, 170, 175, 190. 

Crises, function of religion in, 37, 
38, 41, 42, 43, 76. 

Criticism, social function of, 3; 
destructive, 95, 101, 103, 108, 
113, 154. 

Criticism, higher, 145, 146, 153, 
154. 

Cultural evolution, 16, 61, 70-75; 
function of religion in, 55-64, 
75-77. 

Culture, definition, 12, 71; rela¬ 
tion of religion to, 34, 54-64, 
75, 76; see also Reversions in 
culture. 

Custom, definition, 61; relation 
of religion to, 34, 35, 55, 61- 
63. 

D 

Darwin, Charles, 90, 188. 

Deism, 25. 

Democracy, origin of, 81, 248; in 
social life, 247, 252-259; in in¬ 


dustry, 232-234, 258; in poli¬ 
tics, 249, 251-263; and Chris¬ 
tianity, 71, 81, 248, 262, 263; 
and religion, viii, 2, 248-251, 
257, 262. 

“Democracy of God,” 161. 

Denominations, relations of, 283, 
297. 

Determinism, economic, 210; 
mechanistic, 111. 

Dickinson, G. Lowes, cited, vii. 

Discipline, social, see Morale. 

Discussion, public, 254, 296-298, 
300. 

Distribution of wealth, 214-216, 
222, 223, 227-229, 236, 239. 

Divorce, 21, 102, 206, 208. 

Dogma, theological, 39, 121, 126, 
142. 

Doubt, 14, 30, 120. 

Durkheim, Emile, cited, 27, 34, 
37, 51, 52. 


E 

Ecclesiasticism, 29, 39, 83, 120. 

Economic conditions, 11, 86, 104, 
210-242; and Christianity, 86, 
105, 212, 217, 241, 242. 

Economic determinism, 210. 

Economics, 163, 164, 210, 212, 
214, 219, 221, 223, 241. 

Education, social, 202, 253, 254, 
265, 269, 274, 302; see also Re¬ 
ligious education. 

Educational conditions, 107, 116, 
234, 240, 254, 265, 274, 288. 

Educational function of the 
church, 287-289, 302-304. 

Egoism, 19, 67, 75, 96, 99, 174, 
179, 180, 191, 220; see also 
Group egoism. 

Egoistic theory of human nature, 
96, 105, 179, 212, 268, 305. 

Ellwood, C. A., cited, xii, 3, 9, 11, 
14, 16, 25, 38, 73, 74, 169, 173, 
190, 238, 290, 292. 

Ely, R. T., cited, 162, 221. 

Emery, H. C., cited, 91. 

Emotional element in religion, 


328 


INDEX 


viii, 7, 8, 40, 42, 75, 136, 152, 
168, 170, 296, 305. 

Emotionalism, 152, 289, 296. 

Eneloe, H. G., cited, 151, 284. 

Enthusiasm of humanity, 84, 218, 
259. 

Environment, influence of, 87, 
190, 210, 264; social, 87, 190, 
210, 293, 304; Christian, 294, 
304. 

Epicureans, 97. 

Equality, 233, 247, 248, 250; of 
opportunity, 223, 233-236, 239, 
247. 

Eschatological view of Jesus’ 
teaching, 83, 84, 150, 154. 

Eskimo, communism of, 220. 

Ethical Religion, 26, 54, 55, 64, 
66, 77, 128. 

Ethics and religion, 55, 56, 62, 
64, 128, 161, 162; see Humani¬ 
tarian religion. 

Eucken, R., cited, 46, 82. 

Eugenics and religion, 200-203. 

Europe, religious condition of, 
13, 112, 115. 

Evil, problem of, 68, 134, 135, 
143, 156. 

Evolution, social, 24, 35, 54, 71- 
76, 81, 92, 138; cultural, 16, 
61, 70-75; religious, 24-27, 47- 
54, 69, 75, 81, 83. 

Exchange of services, 163-167, 
176, 213; basis of social life, 
38, 163, 176. 

Experience, as a basis of religion, 
3, 8, 30, 58, 119, 120. 


F 

Faith, xii, 27, 30, 31, 46, 60, 130, 
135, 142, 146, 161, 305. 

Family, the importance of, as a 
primary group, 21, 188-193; 
source of religious ideals, 66, 
81, 191, 193; present condition, 
21, 105, 108, 193-203; and so¬ 
cial religion, 188-209. 

Fear, 22, 31, 172, 216, 244, 246, 
305. 


Feeling element in religion, see 
Emotional element. 

Fellowship, human, 79, 138, 143, 
163, 170-177, 230. 

Figgis, J. N., cited, 18, 19. 

Fitch, A. P., cited, 1, 8, 87. 

Follett, Mary P., cited, 248, 291. 

Food, importance of, 164, 210. 

Force, limits of use, 153, 172, 
173, 174, 175, 243, 259-261. 

Forgiveness, 174-176. 209. 

Fraternity, 78, 118, 121, 125, 167, 
168-173, 181, 184, 192, 216, 232, 
248, 250, 255, 262. 

Frazer, J. G., cited, 51. 

Free society, 28, 112, 157, 247- 
263. 

Freedom of though * and speech, 
157, 247, 254, 255, 296-298, 
300. 

French Revolution, 102. 

Friday, David, cited, 215. 

Function of religion, 34-47; 55- 
66; of early religion, 27, 49- 
52; in the life of the individ¬ 
ual, 27, 37, 38, 40, 41, 44; in 
social control, 42, 55-65; social 
progress, 66, 67, 74-76. 

Future life, see Immortality. 


G 

Galton, Francis, cited, 202. 

Gautama Buddha, 1, 146, 150, 
172. 

Geddes, P., cited, vii. 

German civilization, 21, 84, 104, 
109, 112, 116, 245. 

German higher criticism, 83, 84, 
154. 

German theology, 83, 84. 

Germany, in the Great War, 21, 
24, 103, 112; rehabilitation of, 
116, note. 

Geographic influences, 80, 103. 

Giddings, F. H., cited, 169, 292. 

Glover, T. R., cited, 86, 146. 

God, definition, 54, 136, 137; 
Christian conception of, 84, 
137, 138-140; subjective con- 


INDEX 


329 


ception of, 125, 132, 133; and 
nature, 133-137; and humanity, 
132, 137-140; philosophical 

necessity of, 26, 135, 136; 

origin of idea, 50, 52, 53, 54, 
57. 

Goldenweiser, A. A., cited, 51. 

Good will, social importance of, 
ix, 29, 60, 62, 170-175, 254, 261; 
between classes, 172, 255, 257; 
between nations, 172, 246, 248, 
261; and religion, ix, 29, 60, 
62, 83, 168-176, 261; Chris¬ 
tianity, a religion of, 78, 83, 

92, 118, 159, 168, 181. 

Gospels, Christianity of, xii, 

93, 118, 143, 145, 147, 153, 
184. 

Government and religion, 28, 34, 
65, 104, 243-263. 

Great Britain, 103, 116. 

Greece, ancient, civilization, 96; 
philosophy, 97, 110; influence 
on modern world, 98, 100. 

Greek Catholic Church, 284. 

Greek ideals of life, 96, 97, 110. 

Group, importance of, 42, 60, 66, 
81, 129, 144, 188, 189, 243, 290; 
organization, 243, 246, 247, 

252. 

Group egoism, 95, 171, 172, 256- 
258. 

Group morality, 72, 77, 83. 

Group salvation, 80, 83, 144, 161, 
184. 

Groups, primary, 21, 66, 81, 188- 
192, 248. 

Guyan, J. M., cited, 25. 


H 

Habit, influence of, 14, 15, 34, 60, 
61, 75, 266; and civilization, 
34, 61, 64, 189, 267. 

Hall, G. Stanley, cited, 132, 155. 
Harrison, Frederic, cited, vii, 
xviii. 

Harrison, Jane E., cited, 25, 42, 
47. 

Hart, J. K., cited, 80, 81. 


Hastings’ Encyclopedia of Reli¬ 
gion and Ethics, 33, 52, 184. 

Hatred, 170, 172, 174, 216. 

Haydon, A. E., cited, 132. 

Hayes, E. C., cited, 86, 108. 

Health, 200, 235, 265, 272, 287. 

Hebrews, see Jews. 

Hedonistic ethics, 14, 37, 38, 
114, 194, 267, 269. 

Henotheism, 23, 25, 26, 48, 53. 

Heredity, control of, 200-202. 

Hero worship, 52. 

Historical Christianity, 39, 85- 
89, 186, 270. 

Historical influences, 76, 81, 85- 
89. 

History, human, nature of, 16, 
73, 95. 

History of religion, 24, 48-54, 68, 
69. 

Hobhouse, L. T., cited, xii, 3, 4, 
6, 8, 9, 10, 22, 27, 67, 99, 116, 
136, 139, 168, 221, 225, 248. 

Hocking, W. E., cited, 4, 114, 
186. 

Holmes, J. H., cited, 93, 137. 

Hostility, minimizing, 91, 172, 
246, 248, 258. 

Hubbard, A. J., cited, 35. 

Hudson, J. W., cited, 14, 102. 

Humanitarianism, definition, 67, 
68; relation to Christianity, 
76, 77, 83, 84, 121-124, 160, 
208; in the nineteenth century, 
114, 116. 

Humanitarian ethics, 43, 67, 77, 
80, 81, 99, 100, 116, 160, 176, 
180, 211, 251, 272. 

Humanitarian religion, 43, 67, 68, 
69, 77, 80, 87, 89, 120-160, 170, 
172, 181, 208, 218, 246, 250, 
261, 272, 305; see also Hu¬ 
manity, religion of. 

Humanity, definition, 67; unity 
of ethical valuations, 43, 44, 
180, 183; religion of, 67, 89, 
120, 121, 124, 160, 172, 180. 

Human nature, definition, 266; 
influence of, 15, 100, 253, 266, 
268; theories of, 96, 105, 169, 
174, 179, 212, 305. 


330 


INDEX 


I 

Idealism, social, 66, 81, 126, 192, 
257, 262, 281; relation to re¬ 
ligion, 42, 54, 66, 77, 83, 193, 
281. 

Ideals, social function of, 61, 74, 
89, 90, 104; conflict of, 11, 14, 
75, 85, 98, 99, 100, 101, 117; 
sources of, 21, 66, 81, 188, 191. 

Ideals, Christian, 18, 77-84, 99- 
103, 108, 115, 117, 118, 125, 
128, 130, 153, 155, 185. 

Ideas, pattern, 61, 66, 74, 98, 
173, 191, 248. 

Idolatry, 53. 

Ignorance, sociological, 70, 88, 

202 . 

Imitation, influence of, 60, 174. 

Immoralism, 96, 108, 243. 

Immortality, belief in, 132, MO- 
143; origin of idea, 51, 58; 
necessity of idea, 58, 142; per¬ 
sonal, 142, 143. 

Impulse in religion, 7, 8, 79, note. 

Impulses, animal, 15, 197, 198, 
202, 266, 267, 268, 270, 275. 

Income, 214, 229, 237; of peo¬ 
ple of United States, 214, 222, 
223, 240. 

Individual as a social factor, 17, 
43, 82, 100, 129, 145; value of, 
77, 82, 129, 145, 166, 167, 180, 
183, 287; relation of religion 
to, 27, 29, 34, 36, 40, 41, 44, 
62, 129, 131, 166, 183, 287. 

Individualism in modern civiliza¬ 
tion, 19, 87, 88, 101, 102, 110, 
113, 129, 131, 193, 194, 198, 
207, 208, 212, 224, 244, 255, 
267. 

Industry, modern, and Christian¬ 
ity, 12, 21, 104-107, 195-197, 
210-242. 

Infinite, the, as God, 54, 133. 

Inspiration, 10, 88. 

Institutions, social, 14, 62, 64, 
73, 80, 89, 161, 163, 184, 206; 
Church as an, 39, 131, 280-305. 

Intellectual element in religion, 
3-11, 31, 38, 40, 75, 127-152, 


159, 218, 288, 289, 298, 299, 
302-304. 

Intellectualistic theories of re¬ 
ligion, 4. 

Intelligence and social progress, 
3, 7, 24, 74, 88, 170; in reli¬ 
gion, 3, 7, 31, 64, 75, 92, 114, 
148, 218, 298; see also Reason 
and Social Science. 

Interdependence, social, 12, 29, 
38, 163, 171; international, 12, 
171-173, 186, 246, 260. 

International relations, 12, 24, 
102, 112, 115, 117, 118, 171- 
173, 186, 245, 246, 259-261. 

Intuition, 10, 11. 

Invention, 11, 24, 61, 74. 

Irrationalism, 4, 7, 9, 15, 22. 


J 

James, William, cited, 34, 3T, 
155. 

Jastrow, Morris, cited, 284. 

Japanese, 21, 115. 

Jesus, religion of, 1, 77, 82, 84, 
146; personality of, 82, 147- 
149; founder of Christianity, 
77, 82, 146; historicity of, 

145, 146; as a social philoso¬ 
pher, 91, 159; as a thinker, 
148, note, 159; as Messiah, 
146; as moral leader and 
savior of mankind, 82, 91, 92, 
143, 147-152, 181-186, 207- 

209, 241, 242, 262, 263, 285, 
305. 

Jewish ethics, 69, 81, 148. 

Jewish opinion, modern, 123, 151, 
284, 310. 

Jewish synagogue and Christian 
church, 283, 284. 

Jews, religious genius of, 69, 80, 
81. 

Judaism, 69, 77, 80; and Chris¬ 
tianity, 77, 80, 81. 

Justice, social, 78, 83, 85, 95, 
130, 178, 230, 233, 234, 249, 
261; necessity of, 210, 233, 
242, 261; inadequacy of, 178. 



K 


INDEX 


Kant, Immanuel, cited, 4, 8, 143. 

Kent, C. F., cited, 88. 

Kidd, Benjamin, cited, viii, 9. 

King, W. I., cited, 214, 222. 

King, H. C., cited, 88. 

Kingdom of God, definition, 78, 
184; a social conception, 78, 
84, 129, 161, 182-185, 263; a 
spiritual ideal, 129, 184. 

Kinship, sentiment of, 52, 255. 

L 

Labor, modern condition of, 106, 
213-216, 236; social worth of, 
228, 229; exploitation of, 106, 
213, 216, 236; and Christian¬ 
ity, 229, 241, 242; creative, 
228, 229, 237. 

Labor movement, 106, 107, 232, 
235, 307, 308. 

Laissez-faire attitude, 255. 

Law, social, 62, 90, 134, 135, 159, 
182. 

Laws of nature, 134, 139, 182. 

Leadership, social, 75, 82, 149, 
159, 298, 305; religious, 82, 
113, 149, 276, 282, 290, 305; 
of Jesus, 82, 92, 149, 150, 151, 
159, 182, 305. 

League of Nations, 172, 260. 

Leuba, J. H., cited, 13, 25, 36, 
47, 50, 114. 

Likemindedness, social value of, 
ix, 42, 59, 170, 174, 251, 254, 
255, 259, 261. 

Literature, modern, 101, 107, 108. 

Love, definition, 168, 181; as an 
ethical principle, 78, 84, 92, 
168-176, 207; of humanity, 83, 
84, 169-176, 183, 305; sacri¬ 
ficial, 172-178, 305; sexual, 

197-207, 208; parental, 199, 
204, 208; as central principle 
of Christianity, 78, 83, 84, 92, 
125, 150, 181, 304, 305. 

Loyalty, as an ethical principle, 
39, 42, 60, 131, 143, 149, 182, 
183. 


331 

Luxury in modern life, 102, 165, 
213, 236, 240, 241, 269. 

Lyman, E. W., cited, 127, 136. 

M 

Machiavelli, Niccolo, 18, 19, 96, 
97, 99, 104, 112, 244. 

Machiavellian politics, 21, 29, 
103, 104, 116, 244. 

Magic, 22, 35, 36, 43. 

Maladjustments, social, 167, 168, 
194, 195-197, 202, 213-216, 234- 
236, 249. 

Man, religious nature of, 26, 29, 
37, 38, 40, 41, 44, 47, 64, 66, 
135; social nature of, 42, 71, 
170, 171. 

Mana, 45, 49, 56. 

Manaism, 24, 49-51. 

Manitou, 45, 49. 

Marett, R. R., cited, 35, 47, 48, 
49, 55. 

Marriage, 22, 102, 193-208. 

Marx, Karl, 106. 

Material conditions, 86, 164, 165, 
195-197, 210-242. 

Materialism, 46, 103, 111, 112, 
126, 136, 140, 165, 196, 225, 
250. 

Materialistic standards, 14, 19, 
101-103, 213, 214, 250; see also 
Materialism. 

Mathews, Shailer, cited, 88. 

McConnell, F. J., cited, 102, 298. 

Mechanistic conceptions in 
science, 6, 45, 46, 111, 134, 136. 

Mecklin, J. M., cited, 248, 293. 

Metaphysics, 20, 29, 39, 111, 122, 
126, 127. 

Metaphysical problems, x, 26, 
111, 124, 126, 132-143. 

Methodist movement, 76. 

Methods, in science, 6, 30. 

Militarism, effects of, 103, 104, 
118, 245, 259-261; origin of, 
71, 74, 79. 

Millenarianism, 86. 

Mind, social, 63, 252, 295, 296; 
see also Public opinion. 

Minimum wage, 235. 


332 


INDEX 


Missions, Christian, 186. 

Mohammedanism, 68, 154. 

Monogamy, 194-207. 

Monotheism, 23, 25-27, 54. 

Moral confidence, 26, 37, 41, 135. 

Moral conflicts, see Conflict. 

Moral ideals, see Ideals, social. 

Moral order, see Order, moral. 

Moral standards, 56, 62, 75, 102, 
104, 110, 114, see also Ideals; 
of Christianity, 78, 84, 91; of 
Paganism, 96, 99, 110. 

Morale, social, 179, 180, 181, 253, 
268-271. 

Morality, idealistic, 64, 66, 67; 
customary, 55, 56, 60, 62. 

Morality and religion, 55, 56, 
62, 64, 67, 128, 161, 162. 

Mores, the, definition, 34, 61; so¬ 
cial power of, 34, 75, 103, 293; 
relation to religion, 34, 55, 56, 
62, 79; re-making of, 75, 292, 
293, 294. 

Motivation, social, ix, 149, 156, 
170, 305, 306. 

Mysticism, definition, 113, 114; 
"danger of, 7, 31, 113, 114; 
place in religion, 4, 114, 123. 

Mythological elements in religion, 
59, 120, 139. 

N 

National egoism, 24, 104, 105, 
171-173, 245, 256, 259-261. 

National groups, 16, 24, 102-104, 
115, 118, 172, 243-263. 

National stage of religion, 23, 25, 
53. 

Natural laws, see Laws of Na¬ 
ture. 

Natural science, 11, 111, 117, 
119, 136, 139; see also Science. 

Nature, as related to God, 133, 
134, 137, 138; worship of, 53, 
133; see also Human nature. 

Nature of civilization, see Civili¬ 
zation. 

Nature of society, see Society. 

Negative social attitudes, see At¬ 
titudes, negative. 


Neighborhood group, the, 188. 
Neo-Paganism, 17, 18-21, see 

Paganism. 

Neo-Rationalism, see Rational¬ 
ism. 

Newton, J. F., cited, 108. 
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 18, 19, 20, 
33, 96, 97, 99, 109, 110, 112, 
262. 

Normal life, 193, 195-197, 205, 

211, 234-236, 244, 247, 265, 279. 
Novicow, J., cited, 38, 163. 

O 

Objectivity, demanded by re¬ 
ligion, 125, 132, 133, 134. 
Obligations, social, 56, 100, 203, 

212, 224, 227, 241, 256. 
Optimism and religion, 23, 41, 

46. 

Order, social, 55, 61, 65, 84, 
115; and religion, 55, 61-65, 
78, 84, 130, 183-185. 

Order, moral, 134, 139, 156. 
Organization, social, 61, 243; of 
religious life, 131, 180-305; of 
good will, 175, 255, 260, 261. 
Origin of religion, 34-55, 66. 

P 

Paganism, definition, 96, 98; 

moral element in, 96, 99, 100; 
recrudescence of, 13, 22, 100- 
117; survival of, 95-117, 244; 
in politics, 103, 104, 244, 261; 
in business, 102-107, 114; in 
literature, 101, 107, 108; in 
philosophy, 99, 110; in science, 
110-112; in the church, 86, 92, 
98, 114, 286. 

Pantheism, 54. 

Parental love, 199, 204, 208. 
Parenthood, 204-208. 

Passivity, social, 68, 130, 150. 
Pathological social conditions, 
see Maladjustments, social. 
Patrick, G. T. W., cited, viii. 
Patriotism, 8, 179, 246. 

Patten, W., cited, 111. 


INDEX 


Pattern ideas, 61, 74, 98, 173, 
191, 248. 

Paul, 88. 

Peace, social, 171, 173, 216, 248, 
258, 260; international, 118, 
172, 173, 260, 261. 

Personality, as an ethical con¬ 
cept, 77, 143, 162, 181, 183, 
252; as a social influence, 82, 
126, 129, 149, 167, 182. 

Pessimism, 15, 16, 23, 24, 41, 60, 
95. 

Philosophy, modern, 6, 110. 

Philosophy, social, x. 

Physical elements in human life, 
86, 164, 197-202, 210-242, 265. 

Plato, cited, 79, 97. 

Play, function of, 264-279; 
necessity of, 265; degradation 
of, 266-269. 

Pleasure, as an ethical end, 97, 

99, 100, 101, 102, 110, 114, 193, 
267. 

Pleasure, social, 99, 101, 264- 
279. 

Political corruption, 106, 245. 

Political life, 105, 243-263. 

Political organization, 243-263; 
importance of, 243, 246; demo¬ 
cratic form of, 247-263; and 
Christianity, 248, 250, 262, 

263. 

Politics, anti-Christian, 103, 104, 
114, 244, 245. 

Polygamy, 22. 

Polytheism, 53. 

Positive, defined, 119. 

Positive Christianity, 119-160. 

Positive religion, 119-126, 127, 
138 139. 

Positive science, 30, 119, 126, 127, 
139. 

Positivism, Comtean, 1, 46, 122, 
132. 

Power, as an ethical end, 97, 99, 

100, 101, 104, 110, 173, 244, 
246, 267. 

Power, the will to, 2. 

Poverty, moral effects of, 213, 
214, 216, 235; elimination of, 
234-239, 240. 


333 

Pragmatism, 132. 

Prayer, 154-157. 

Press, freedom of, 254, 297; 
power of, 300, 301; religious, 
301. 

Predatory traditions, 71, 75, 76, 
97, 98, 107, 110, 212. 

Primitive man, 27, 71, 72; re¬ 
ligion of, 27, 49-53, 55, 56. 

Production, economic, 164, 222, 
223, 230. 

Progress, social, 24, 38, 61, 73, 
74, 95, 167, 170, 190, 229; re¬ 
ligion and, 64, 65-67, 75, 161, 
190; Christianity and, 75, 76, 
78, 83, 138. 

Progressive religion, 30, 66, 126. 

Profits, business for, 21, 29, 
105. 

Property, private, necessity of, 
219, 220, 224; abuses of, 102, 
105, 212-214, 240; and Chris¬ 
tianity, 211, 218, 227, 241; 
socialization of, 220, 226. 

Prophetism, 290. 

Prophets, the Jewish, 69, 77, 80. 

Protestant Reformation, 1, 76. 

Protestant Christianity, 87, 113, 
283-285, 286, 291. 

Psychic nature of culture, 61-63, 
74, 107; of human society, vii, 
11, 38, 61, 74. 

Psychology, human, 33, 34, 41, 
145, 289, 301; see also Be¬ 
havior, human. 

Psychology of religion, 33, 40-42, 
199. 

Public conscience, 197, 276, 290- 

293, 301. 

Public discussion, see Discussion, 
public. 

Public health, see Health. 

Public opinion, definition, 252, 

294, 296; power of, 290, 291- 
293; formation of, 252-254, 
294-303; guidance of, 253, 290, 
296-303. 

Public ownership, 221, 231, 232. 

Public sentiment, 296. 

Public worship, see Worship. 

Puritanism, the new, 271. 


334 


INDEX 


Q 

Quakers, mysticism of, 113. 

R 

Races, antagonism of, 16, 67, 171, 
186, 259, 265. 

Racial egoism, 172, 250, 259. 

Rational, defined, 3. 

Rational religion, 3, 5, 7, 8, 11, 
30, 31, 35, 55, 63, 92, 119-160. 

Rationalism, the new, 4, 8, 9, 31, 
136; eighteenth-century, 7, 8, 
36. 

Ravage, M. E., cited, 123. 

Reason, definition, 5, 8, 9; func¬ 
tion of, 8, 9, 38; in religion, 4, 
7, 8, 9, 31, 38, 40. 

Reconciliation, doctrine of, 169, 
170, 172, 173, 247, 283. 

Reconstruction of religion, 3, 15, 
33, 70, 93, 119, 161, 210, 243, 
264, 282. 

Reconstruction, social, 3, 15, 93, 
213; of the family, 188-209; of 
industry, 210-242; of govern¬ 
ment, 243-263; of social amuse¬ 
ments, 264-279; of the church, 
280-305. 

Recreation, social, necessity of, 
265; as an element in social 
pleasures, 272, 274, 295; and 
the church, 275-277. 

Redemption, social, 78, 144, 166- 
168, 176, 242, 276, 290. 

Redemptive religion, 78, 84, 87, 
127, 129, 144, 145, 158, 167, 
181, 183, 186, 242, 276, 290. 

Reformation of criminals, 170, 
175. 

Reformation, the New, 1. 

Reformation, Protestant, 1, 76. 

Religion, definition, 47, as an ob¬ 
ject of scientific study, 3, 5, 33; 
reconstruction of, 3, 92, 120- 
264; in revolution, 1-31; and 
science, 2-32, 92, 120-160; and 
reason, 4, 7-9, 37, 38, 40; 
origin of, 34-55, 66; evolution 
of, 24, 47-54, 69, 75; primitive, 


27, 49-53, 55; ethical, 26, 55, 
64, 66, 77, 128; theistic, 25, 64, 
136, 137; function of, 34-47, 55- 
66; psychology of, 33, 40-42, 
199; revival of, viii, 75, 282; 
social significance of, 33, 37, 
38-69, 75; and social control, 
see Control; and social order, 
see Order; and social progress,J 
see Progress; and social values, 
see Values; of Jesus, 1, 77, 82, 
84; and Christianity, see 
Christianity; positive, 119-160; 
and the family, 188-209; and 
business, 210-242; and politics, 
243-263; and amusements, 264- 
279; see also Church. 

Religious education, 269, 279, 
287-289, 302-304. 

Religious problem, the, 20, 26, 
64. 

Religious psychosis, 33, 36. 

Religious Revolution, the, ix, 1, 
2, 12, 14, 16, 21, 23, 24, 26, 31, 
131, 304. 

Religious unity, 282-286. 

Renaissance, the, 99, 102. 

Renunciation, doctrine of, 68, 85, 
99, note. 

Revivals of religion, 75. 

Reversions to barbarism, 75, 95- 
117, 193, 212, 244, 266, 294; 
to paganism, 13, 20, 22, 93- 
117; in culture, 15, 16, 21, 22, 
23. 

Revolutions, 15, 76, 77, 130, 217; 
see also Religious Revolu¬ 
tion. 

Rhys-Davids, cited, 172. 

Rights, scientific view of, 223, 
224, 255, 256. 

Ritual, 157. 

Roman civilization, 79, 80, 96- 

102 . 

Rome, ethical influence of, 96- 
102; political influence of, 96, 
97. 

Ross, E. A., cited, 91, 264, 265. 

Rowntree, B. S., cited, 230. 

Royce, J., cited, 110. 

Russell, Bertrand, cited, 13. 


INDEX 


335 


Russia, 103, 118, 219; rehabili¬ 
tation of, 116, note. 

S 

Sacred, the, defined, 49, 55; as 
primitive element in religion, 
49. 

Sacrifice, self, in religion, 38, 42, 
43, 60, 63, 67; in Christianity, 
78, 174-178, 181, 184, 209. 

Sacrificial love, 174-178, 305. 

Salvation, 37, 132, 143, 150, 156; 
social conception of, 143, 144. 

Santayana, George, cited, 95, 99. 

Savagery, 27, 48, 55, 71-73. 

Savage mind, the, 27, 49-51, 55. 

Schleiter, F., cited, 48. 

Schweitzer, A., cited, 83, 145, 150. 

Science, definition, 6, 9; nature 
of, 6, 9; effects of, 2, 5, 12, 
107, 117; and reason, 6, 37, 40; 
and religion, viii, 2-32, 33-40, 
60, 62, 92, 110-112, 119-160; 
see also Social science. 

Scientific method, 6, 30. 

School, and religion, 288, 292, 
303; and the church, 288, 302, 
303. 

Secularization, 28, 29. 

Seeley, J. R., cited, 84. 

Self-assertion, 99. 

Self-consciousness, 40, 71, note. 

Self-culture, 99, 100, 187. 

Self-development, 110, 180, 187. 

Self-gratification, 100, 114, 193, 
267. 

Self-indulgence, 38, 114, 240, 267. 

Self-interest, 102-107, 109, 169, 
194, 212, 216, 261; inadequacy 
of, 169, 179, 180, 194. 

Self-realization, social, 100. 

Self-sacrifice, see Sacrifice. 

Sellars, R. W., cited, 25, 41. . 

Service, human, as practical 
principle of Christianity, 77, 
120, 159, 162, 181, 262; as an 
ethical ideal, 38, 43, 60, 77, 83, 
100, 105, 120, 125, 163-168, 170, 
171, 176, 181, 191, 209; as an 
economic principle, 227-229. 


Sex and religion, 199-203, 269, 
271, 275. 

Sex education, 201, 202. 

Sexes, relations of, 198-203; 
Christian ideal of, 208, 209. 

Shenton, Herbert N., cited, xiii, 
238. 

Shotwell, J. T., cited, 7. 

Simkhovitch, V., cited, 76, 80, 91, 
148, 149. 

Sin, defined, 143; social concep¬ 
tion of, 143, 144, 176. 

Slavery, 73, 213. 

Small, Albion W., cited, 163, 212, 
220 229. 

Smith, G. B., cited, 31, 32, 117. 

Sport, 269, 273. 

Social adaptation and religion, 
see Adaptation. 

Social attitudes, see Attitudes, 
social. 

Social control, see Control, social. 

Social development, see Evolu¬ 
tion, social. 

Social education, see Education, 
social. 

Social environment, see Environ¬ 
ment, social. 

Social groups, see Group. 

Social justice, see Justice. 

Social ideals, see Ideals. 

Social intelligence, see Intelli¬ 
gence and social progress. 

Social leadership, see Leadership. 

Social mind, 63, 252, 295, 296. 

Social obligation, see Obligations, 
social. 

Social order, see Order. 

Social organization, see Organiza¬ 
tion, social. 

Social progress, see Progress. 

Social reconstruction, see Recon¬ 
struction. 

Social religion, defined, 43, 67, 
162; essentials of, 128-131, 161- 
187; genesis of, 42, 43, 44, 66; 
and Christianity, 76, 77, 81, 
83, 84; and social science, 162- 
180; and the family, 188-209; 
and amusements, 264-279; and 
politics, 243-263; and economic 


330 


INDEX 


conditions, 210-242; and the 
church, 280-305. 

Social retrogression, 15, 16, 17. 

Social science, defined, x, 161; as 
a support of religion, xi, 5, 30, 
41, 90-92, 159, 162-180, 299; 
and the teachings of Jesus, 90- 
92, 166, 177, 181-186, 207-209, 
241, 262, 278, 298-300. 

Social values, see Values. 

Socialism, Marxian, 106, 107, 226. 

Socialization, 40, 163, 168, 189, 
226, 254; of property, 226. 

Society, human, nature of, 38, 
163, 171; Christian, 82, 83, 87, 
92, 115, 118, 184, 209, 263, 306. 

Sociology, x, xii, 33, 34, 42, 61, 
70, 72, 76, 80, 91, 140, 145, 259, 
293, 300, 303. 

Sociology of religion, 33. 

Socrates, 97. 

Son of Man, 146. 

Sophists of Greece, 97. 

Spaulding, E. G., cited, 9, 140. 

Spencer, Herbert, cited, 52. 

Spending, ethics of, 239, 240. 

Spiritual, defined, 45; reality of, 
45, 46, 111, 135, 136. 

Spirits, see Animism. 

State, pagan idea of, 96, 103, 243, 
244, 261. 

Stoicism, 80. 

Strong, Josiah, cited, 91, 285. 

Subjectivism in religion, 125-127, 
132, 133, 140-142. 

Suffering, human, 60, 68, 87, 114, 
167, 176, 177. 

Sunday school, the, 287, 292, 302, 
303. 

Sunday observance, 277, 278. 

Supernatural in religion, 31, 49, 
56. 

Superstition in religion, 2, 22, 36, 
43. 

Sympathy, social importance of, 
168-173, 254-258; in Christian¬ 
ity, 78, 84. 

T 

Taboo, 49, 55, 65, 131. 


Tawney, R. H., cited, 212, 217, 
224, 227. 

Taxation in Christian society, 
238-240. 

Teutonic tradition, 97. 

Theism, 25, 54, 136, 137. 

Theological Christianity, ix, 16, 
18, 118, 286, 305. 

Theological element in religion, 
x, 12, 27, 39, 59, 77, 85, 118, 
126, 127-159. 

Theology, 7, 12, 13, 18, 20, 26, 39, 
59, 85, 88, 118, 120, 121, 127, 
128, 138, 143, 145. 

Thomas, J. B., cited, 84, 85. 

Thomas, W. I., cited, 50. 

Thomson, J. Arthur, cited, 111, 
163. 

Todd, A. J., cited, 163, 169. 

Toleration, religious, 157, 158. 

Totemism, as a form of religion, 
25. 

Tradition, social importance of, 
63, 107; transmission of, 34, 
62, 63; conflicts in, 75, 99, 100, 
101, 117. 

Tradition in religion, 4, 34, 42, 
62, 147, 186. 

Tribal ethics, 72, 77, 83. 

Tufts, J. H., cited, 217. 


U 

Unearned incomes, 228, 237-239. 

Unemplovment, 215, 216, 234, 
235. 

Understanding, social importance 
of, 169-172, 255-258. 

Union of the Churches, 282-286. 

Universe, the, in religious con¬ 
sciousness, 6, 26, 40, 46, 54, 
133-137. 

Universities and religion, 112, 
300. 

V 

Values, social, ix, 11, 15, 34, 39, 
41, 42-45, 54, 59, 62-67; moral, 
14, 16, 53, 62; religious, 13, 14, 


INDEX 


16, 20, 39, 40-47, 53, 58, 62, 
65. 

Vicarious suffering, 178. 

Vice, 167, 202, 269. 

Votaw, C. W., cited, 78, 80. 


W 

Wages, low, 195, 214-216, 235. 
War, and social evolution, 71, 
118, 173; and democracy, 259- 
261; the stopping of, 116-118, 
171, 172, 173, 261; moral sub¬ 
stitute for, 130. 

War, the Great, causes of, vii, 21, 


337 

103-117; effects of, 22, 37, 94, 
115, 118, 245. 

Ward, Harry F., cited, 211, 235, 
310. 

Ward, Lester F., cited, 244. 
Wealth, proper use of, 100, 212, 
239-242; distribution of, 222, 
223, 227-230, 236, 239. 

Webb, C. C. J., cited, 37, 46. 
Wells, H. G., cited, 85, 92, 132. 
Will, the, see Good will. 

Wolfe, A. B., cited, 91. 

Woman, position of, 196, 247. 
World, as subject of redemption 
129, 144, 158, 186, 290. 
Worship, 157, 300, 303. 




Nil 88 
























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